
;— Jjr--"5^ 



^^^.....-i?'- ,^..^.....^ 



.\<s-;v^\s^^;>ss^^V-^>-<^\Ns»v>^c-^>;<^>S'.o>N\-Sv^^^ 



^iSCSJWSSsNNVSSS 



jr^'OT'^T^. 



HOWL AND 



•S«S!S*t^\«&SS! " 




Class .^^llXa 3-2-^ 
Book_: -^"Hli_ 

()Oi)yrightN° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE CHASE OF DE WET. 




FREDERICK HOPPIN HOWLAND. 



THE CHASE OF HE WET 

AND 

OTHER LATER PHASES OF THE BOER WAR 

AS SEEN BY AN AMERICAN 

CORRESPONDENT 



BY 



FREDERICK HOPPIN ROWLAND 

w 

WAR CORRESPONDENT FOR THE LONDON DAILY MAIL 
AND THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL 



> ') '>^ J \ 3)3 *>' ')' 



PROVIDENCE 

PRESTON AND ROUNDS COMPANY 

1901 
L • 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two CoPiEs Received 

MAY 31 1901 

COPYRtGMT ENTRY 

CLASS CtXXc. N». 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1901, 

BY 

Frederick Hoppin Howland. 



• • - « 



• • • • 

• • • 



•.« •«• 



• • • ;• 



• • • • 

• • • 

• • • 






^^\ 
^ A 

^ <^^ 



TO 

M. H. H. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter. Page. 

I. From the Solent to Table Bay, 1 

II. Cape Town in 1900, 

III. The Censor at Bloemfontein, 13 

ly. Seekmg the Elusive Front, 18 

y. The Front at Last, .30 

yi. The yast Land of the Boers, 40 

yil. Fitting Out for the Front, 52 

yill. The Relief of yryburg, .59 

IX. Invading the Transvaal 6S 

X. Incidents of the March, 75 

XL Outwitting De Wet at Potchefstroon:, ... 85 

XII. Seeking Lord Methuen, 96 

XIII. Peace-Making with Lord Methuen, . . . . lOG 

Xiy. With Hunter Again, 114 

Xy. The Chase of De Wet Begins, 118 

Xyi. De Wet at Bay on the yaal, 130 

Xyil. At Bay at yredefort, 138 

Xyill. Wolf, 148 

XIX. The Boer on his Own Heath, 153 

XX. The Lessons of the Chase, 171 

XXL The Home Trail, 182 

XXII. The Men Who Fight England's Battles, . . 188 



CHAPTEK I. 

Feom the Solent to Table Bay. 

The good ship " Scot," still, I believe, holder of the 
record between The Needles and Green Point, drew 
alongside her dock at Cape Town, on her fourth 
outward voyage from England, on the morning of 
Wednesday, April 24, 1900, seventeen days out from 
Southampton. No one who loves the sea can re- 
gret an hour spent in those pleasant waters that lie 
between Cape Finisterre and the Cape of Good Hope. 
We had touched at Madeira, that ill-kept, picturesque 
garden spot, sunning itself so smilingly in the lovely 
summer sea, and had spent a few boisterous hours 
bumping over the greasy cobble-stones of Funchal 
in palanquins drawn by diminutive bullocks and rest- 
ing on primitive runners, in deference to the local 
Portuguese prejudice against wheels. Putting out 
to sea again, with course sha^Ded due south to round 
Cape de Yerde, we had gazed in awe next day at the 
noble peak of Teneriffe, rising sheer out of the sea 
to its majestic height of 12,000 feet. We caught our 
first glimpse of it in the dawn, and not until late in 
the afternoon did it flash its last greeting to us from 
its gleaming pinnacle. And as the ship cleaved her 
placid way through the tropics and across the line. 



2 THE CHASE OF.DE WET. 

our faces caressed by the soft and constant trade 
winds, we leaned for hours ao-ainst the rail, watching 
the dolphins lazily tumbling over the rippling waves 
and the tiny flying-fishes skimming away from the 
sides of the great ship, to them the most terrifying 
of all the monsters of the deep that they spend their 
harassed lives in fleeing from. 

The ship's company were such as one would expect 
to find voyaging out to South Africa in the spring of 
that year of grace. The British army, just beginning 
to retrieve the disasters suffered under Methuen and 
Gatacre and BuUer, was re^Dresented on board by 
half a dozen young officers. One had come all the 
way from India via England to join his regiment at 
Bloemfontein ; he and a few of the others, you knew 
at a glance, were of the type of which there was sore 
need in Africa — keen-eyed, stalwart, intelligent men 
of blood and mettle. The others were of the raw 
militia variety, affecting petty mannerisms and poses 
calculated to invite attention from the women aboard 
— the kind that spoke contempbuously of" outsiders," 
and that one was sure to find later stellenhosched in 
some out-of-the-way corner far from the front. You 
watched them come down to dinner heavily capari- 
soned, and sighed to realize that you would probably 
not be able to hear what Kitchener would say to 
them in the dread hour when they should make theii' 
first mess of things. Then there was a trooper of 



FKOM THE SOLENT TO TABLE BAY. S 

Strathcona's Horse, a reckless, devil-may-care fellow, 
who, after ten years of rough life in the Northwest 
Territory, craved the excitement of war in Africa ; 
and an elderly retired Colonel from Wales, going out 
to bid Godspeed to a son about to start for the 
front, as he explained to us all before we had been 
twelve hours at sea. In the minds of all these the 
war was up^Dermost, though, with the instinctive an- 
tipathy of the Englishman against "talking shop," 
they seldom spoke of it. You saw proof of it only 
at those rare intervals when we x)assed a ship home- 
ward bound, in the interest with which they asked 
the ship's officers the meaning of the message of the 
signal flags. The answer each time was " No news," 
and we realized with relief that " The Little Man " 
was still resting at Bloemfontein after Paardeburg. 

Finally, the profession of arms claimed two naval 
officers. One, retired before his time, had made a 
failure of life and was seeking an op^Dortunity at the 
front to redeem a w^asted past. The other was on the 
threshold of a career which, I like to assure myself, 
will be marked with brilliant service. High bred, 
" tight and taut from truck to keelson " one might say 
in nautical parlance, his actions reflected somewhat 
the recklessness of youth ; but he was withal so manly 
and so jolly, giving off so much of the frankness and 
the freshness of the sea, of that brave, free spirit 
with which the sea endows the sailor, that we all 



4 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

grieyed to see liim over tlie side as we dropped 
auclior off Funclial, where lie left us to join his ship. 

Of the rest of us, two were pale-faced newsi^aper 
men, temporarily released from the London office of 
the Daily Mail, with leave to indulge in a brief vaca- 
tion at Madeii'a. To the other passengers the war 
was an event of interest only because of its effect 
upon their business. They were mostly colonists 
returning from a visit home, or gathering at Ca^^e 
Town to be ready for the half expected collapse of 
the Boer resistance that would start the wheels of 
business turning again. Scattered among these were 
a consignment of raw youngsters going out to take 
up positions as clerks in the Standard Bank of South 
Africa. Two young married women, one a bride, 
going out to be nearer her husband, from whom she 
had been parted by the outbreak of the war ; a bright 
but fragile Colonial girl ; another army officer's wife 
who smoked cigarettes on deck, but was none the 
less charming ; and a couple of nursing sisters made 
up the list of fair passengers and contributed the 
necessary element of frivolity. 

The time passed as it usually does under such cir- 
cumstances, given a company resigned to such con- 
geniality as was possible, and aided by an absence 
of much restraint and an atmosphere slightly flavored 
with the recklessness due to an aiDpreciation of the 
fortunes and risks of war. There were harmless 



FEOM THE SOLENT TO TABLE BAY. 5 

sports ou deck in the daytime, g-ames of a less innoc- 
uous character in the smoking'-room in the evening's, 
and the daily auction pool on the ship's run, which 
Lroug-ht its usual revelations of the characters of 
winners and losers. Then the band played for us 
three times a day ; and in the placid equatorial 
waters, through which the ship ploughed its way on 
an even keel for days and nights together we danced 
in the romping English fashion, on the moonlit deck 
of an evening. 

It was a pleasant life that we took to willingly 
enough. But it was all forgotten in the first glimpse 
of Table Mountain, gTim symbol of a very different 
world. 



CHAPTEE II. 

Cape Towx ix 1900. 

Cape Town looks very fair as seen from the sea, 
nestling- in tlie yerdure tliat covers tlie base of that 
great, overtowering rock that is one of the sights of 
the world. Impressive, too, is one's first view of the 
harbor and the innumerable docks. As the " Scot " 
steamed slowly np to her berth on that rare April 
morning, the busy life of a great port and of a great 
army's chief base of supplies was all about us. 
Transports just arrived from England, from Canada, 
from Australia, and from India, huge numbers on 
their bows, crowded the roads or rubbed noses at the 
docks with full-rigged ships from China or tramps 
from the Brazils. Steamers with the cargoes of war 
just discharged were hurrying past us out to sea, to 
meet others heavily laden hurrying in. Great, gleam- 
ing-sided warships swung majestically at their an- 
chors here and there. A forest of slender masts and 
massive funnels hemmed us in so closely that it seemed 
as if there could be no way forth. And the air was 
filled with the staccato iDuffing and rattling of busy 
donkey engines, the creaking of derrick arms, the 
hoarse voices of ship's officers calling out orders to 



CAPE TOWN IN 1900. 7 

the crews and wharf Kaffirs emptying and filling holds, 
and with all the accompanying sounds of stir and 
bustle that go with such a scene. 

But at a nearer view the town belied the fair prom- 
ise it held out from afar. It is true there was life 
enough about you as you threaded your way in the 
dingy cab out of the labyrinth of docks into Adderley 
street. There all was martial bustle, and the tint of 
khaki was everywhere. Squads of soldiers afoot, 
troops of horse, batteries of artillery, tramped and 
clattered and rumbled along the side streets on their 
way to the squat railway station or to some dusty camp 
on the outskirts of the town. It all suggested "the 
front," and "the front" was apparently in every- 
body's mind. The air of indifference worn by a few 
Uase officers strolling along twirling their flimsy 
bamboo sticks seemed out of place. " When are you 
off?" was the question heard most frequently when 
men stopped to exchange greetings on a corner ; and 
the answer, "to-night" or "to-morrow," generally 
evoked expressions of congratulation or envy as the 
speakers hurried on again. " The front " was where 
everybody wanted to be— later I met an officer who 
was drinking himself to sure disgrace under the weight 
of orders that kept him indefinitely at Cape Town. 
Lord Roberts' army was still resting at Bloemfon- 
tein ; but the knowledge that the forward movement 
towards Pretoria was about to begin had somehow 



8 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

slipped past the press censor, and uo one with blood 
in his veins could staj^ behind content. 

And there was nothing abont Caj)e Town to make 
one glad to linger there. Aside from the troops, it 
lacked as a city about eyerything needed to make it 
attractive. Table Mountain would perhaps dwarf 
any collection of buildings ; but certain it is that the 
eye, seeking vainly for anything noteworthy along 
the city's streets, returned always to rest upon that 
statety i^eak. The buildings are nearly uniformly 
cheap and squat ; unsubstantial looking, and mostly 
dirty and badly cared for outside and in. " Poverty, 
hunger, and dirt " were most forcibly suggested by 
the normal life of the streets. A general air of un- 
tidiness-pervaded the toT\Ti, and was disappointing 
when one realized that there were prosperous mer- 
chants and thriving business houses in what was after 
all one of the great seaports of the world. It may 
be that the prevailing wish of the average English- 
man to get back " Home " again as soon as he can 
leads him to resfard a habitation in the colonies as 
merely a temporarj^ one, and thus not worth the care 
that he would otherwise take to make his surround- 
ings as cheerful and as comfortable as he might ; but 
some such carelessness has left its stamj) on Cape 
Town, and it takes its outward character from dingy 
hotels, ramshackle public vehicles, and slovenly 
Dutchmen and Kaffirs, who outnumber the tidy East 



CAPE TOWN IX 1900. 9 

Indians whose turbans and q-av waistbands o-ive the 
sole gleam of color and picturesqneness to be seen in 
the streets. Cax:>e Town was settled only a little later 
than New York, but it remains to-daj^ comparable 
only to a third-rate village of the more s^^arsely set- 
tled West or Northwest of the North American conti- 
nent. It lacks dignity. Its sanitary arrangements, 
save in the suburban dwellings of the better class, 
where alone the refinements of life seem to be con- 
sidered, are hardly better than Havana's were under 
the Spanish regime. The hotels in the city are inde- 
scribably dirty, and the food in the public places far 
from g'ood. Even the eggs are brought from Madeira, 
the Dutch being too lazy to kee^D hens. 

The contrast between such surroundings and those 
amid which the army was moving at the front — be- 
tween the lazy, even sordid, life of Cape Town and 
the strenuous work the hosts assembled from the 
four quarters of the globe were doing with the " Little 
Man " U13 country — would alone have been sufficient 
to make us, whose life was now centered in that of the 
army, impatient to be off. 

I hurried through my preparations, taking what 
little time I could to learn enough about the Boers to 
settle most of my doubts as to the respective rights 
of Boer and Briton ; and on the evening of the third 
of May, after seeing the various bundles and boxes 
that contained my kit safely stowed away, I took my 



10 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

place, dressed in kliaki, in the corner of a fii'st-class 
railway carriage in the nightly train for Bloemfon- 
tein. A few minutes later we were on our way, and 
I congratulated myself that the final stage of my 
journey to the front had at last begun. 

The train w^as filled with officers, with a sprinkling 
of meek ciyilians; and besides the carriages there 
were several trucks well laden with supplies. These 
were all for the army — it was not until long afterwards 
that goods for any other consignee were permitted to 
leave Cape Town. Sharing my compartment were 
two of the few civilians whom the authorities had 
consented to permit to go forward. One was a little 
doctor of Bloemfontein, suffering sadly from asthma. 
He was greatly depressed at first ; but his affliction 
abated as we gradually reached higher altitudes, and 
by the second day he was quite cheery. My other 
comj)anion was a lanky, sour-visaged individual, ap- 
parently young, but evidently in verj^ poor health, 
who had taken prompt advantage of my inexperience 
of Cape Government Eailw^ay methods to appropriate 
to himself the lower berth I had reserved before 
leaving. 

Thus I spent the first two nights of our dreary 
journey in the u^Dper berth, unsuccessfully trying to 
fathom the meaning of the strange glances which I 
kept meeting in the eyes of the occupant of my lower 
berth. It didn't make much difference after all what 



CAPE TOWN IN 1900. 11 

couch one lay upon — it was simply a matter of climb- 
ing. These berths were not beds such as those who 
travel in Pullman cars are accustomed to. They needed 
no attention from a porter. Retiring, you wrapped 
your rugs about you, and lay down in your clothes 
upon a leather mattress, with a hard bolster under 
your head for a pillow, and a rail six inches high to 
keep you from rolling out. But it was such a couch 
as I learned later to yearn for as a luxury. 

The railway northward from Cape Town traverses 
a dreary, monotonous country almost to the border 
of the Free State. Pleasant villas, set in smiling 
gardens, surround the port ; but they are quickly left 
behind, and thereafter for a day you are in the Karroo 
desert, with a parched plain as level as the sea all 
around you, and not a slirub to cheer the eye. Near- 
ing the outer border, black rocks begin to crop up 
on the horizon, which grow later into hills, of softly 
rounded outlines ; and then at last, as one draws near 
the Orange river, the hills rise into mountains, and 
you look with relief into blue distances and upon 
green-clad slopes. 

At that time it was a difficult matter to get to the 
front. One was comparatively unmolested as far as 
Norvals Pont, the railway station on the border be- 
tween Cape Colony and the Orange Free State. But 
there the drift by which one gained access to the 
enemy's country was guarded by an army Cerberus 



12 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

who used every device wliicli red tape could suggest 
to turn most people, and especially civilians, back. 
There the little asthmatic doctor and I lost our lanky 
companion. My papers, as well as the former's, how- 
ever, proved sufficient ; and with a complaint about 
the carelessness of the officials at Cape Town, who 
had left out a date in copying my j)ermit from Lord 
Roberts, the young lieutenant who acted as Railway 
Staff Officer indulgently wrote the endorsement 
"Permitted to proceed." And on Sunday morning, 
after an uneventful journey of three days, I dulj^ 
arrived in Bloemfontein. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Censor at Bloemfontein. 

At Bloemfontein I met with my first check. Lord 
Roberts, with that g-racions courtesy which is so pro- 
minent a part of his nature, had dictated a telegram 
to Sir Alfred Milner " gladly according " me permis- 
sion to accompany his force as press correspondent. 
But he had sent that message a few days before, when 
his headquarters were still at Bloemfontein ; by the 
time I arrived there the long-looked-for forward 
movement had begun, and he was fighting- his way 
across the Yet river Avhen I presented my credentials 
to Lord Wolverton, left behind as iDress censor. I 
have before me now the endorsement which his lord- 
ship, in answer to my request for the necessary au- 
thority to proceed, wrote across the official copy of 
my telegram from the Field Marshal commanding-in- 
chief. This is it : 

" I cannot grant a pass to Mr. Howland until I get 
permission from Lord Stanley. 

(Signed) Wolverton." 

In vain I expostulated and argued ; in vain I drew 
attention to the terms of Lord Roberts's message. 



14 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Lord Stanley (lie was press censor at headquarters, 
and as sucli lield in the hollow of his hand "our 
lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor") had left 
strict orders that no correspondent was to go u^d 
unless his name appeared on a list left with Lord 
Wolverton. This list did not include my name. 
Orders were orders, said the obdurate censor; and 
as far as the Field Marshal's teleg-ram was con- 
cerned. Lord Wolverton could only assume that he 
had changed his mind since wiring me that I might 
come. 

I sought out the General commanding at Bloem- 
fontein, and a council of war was duly convened, but 
with no other result than a further endorsement on 
my j)apers, signed by the chief of staff, in the follow- 
ing terms : 

"Until authority is received from the press censor it 
is regretted a pass cannot be given you to proceed." 

And Lord Wolverton said : "Of course you can try 
to slip up if you wish, but I advise you not to play 
any such games." He did consent, however, to let 
me communicate with Lord Stanley; but the wires 
were crowded with military matter, and I could not 
hope to avoid a delay of several days, during which 
the army would be advancing still further northward. 
This Avas galling, because my instructions were to 
join General Hunter at the earliest possible moment, 



THE CENSOR AT BLOEMFONTEIN. 15 

and he was then at Fourteen Streams, on the western 
iDorder of the Free State, moying toward the relief of 
Mafeking. These instructions I could not carry out 
until I had seen Lord Stanley personally, and every 
hour of delay increased the distance I should have to 
travel to headquarters and back again to Bloemfon- 
tein, whence I must proceed by rail around to Kim- 
berley. 

However, there was nothing for it but to exercise 
such patience as I could ; so I took a room in the 
Free State Hotel and gathered notes for a column or 
two about Bloemfontein. 

And that enforced sta}^ in the abandoned capital 
was not entirely unprofitable. I saw enough to con- 
vince me that those good people at home who were 
crying out against the tyranny and rapacity of John 
Bull would be greatly benefited by a sight of that 
pleasant village as it then appeared. Seventy-five 
thousand troops had camped there for many weeks 
and departed without leaving a scar. I sat on the 
stoep of the hotel that first evening and watched the 
scene on the public square. It was a beautiful even- 
ing. The sun had set in that glory of delicate color- 
ing which one rarely sees in other lands, and almost 
at once the air had become deliciously cool, a welcome 
change after a hot day. As the wondrous shades of 
pink and green and turquoise succeeded one another 
and then began to fade out of the sky, leaving the 



16 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

half moon and a solitary planet in full possession, 
little girls in wliite frocks and sun-bonnets came out 
of the neighboring' houses and began to romp. Small 
groups of "Tommies" and now and then a company 
or regiment passed by, the men looking business-like 
in their dust-worn khaki ; and every once in a while 
a cart went by, drawn by a bullock or a mule, and 
driven by a nigger as black as the ace of spades, 
giving eA^ery moment or so his sharp cry of " Yek ! 
yek ! " to urge his slow-going steeds along. East 
Indians in turbans, flowing jackets, and putties en- 
casing distressingly thin legs, their black and often 
handsome faces always severe, passed constantly, 
chatting lightly but in subdued tones, and taking 
note of everything. Some of them in passing you 
said " Salaam, Sahib ! " or gave you fuller greeting 
in their native tongue, calling down blessings, one 
imagined, on the Heaven-born. Now and again an 
orderly or a despatch-rider ambled by on his pony, 
saddlebags and holster full, and side-arms conspicu- 
ously displayed. Officers were everywhere,' most of 
them carrying the inevitable little bamboo stick ; 
most of them in helmets, but some wearing the little 
peaked cap, cocked jauntily over the right ear. A 
grimmer touch was added to the picture when a piece 
of artillery went by on its way to the station ; and 
much noise was made by a traction engine. But 
there was no bustling and no crowding. Everyone 



THE CENSOR AT BLOEMFONTEIN. 17 

moved in leisurely fashion, uow that peace had set- 
tled over Bloemfontein ; and I wondered what the 
contrast would be with the same khaki-garbed Tommy 
at the front. 

Next afternoon I found the square much more 
crowded, the attraction being the band, which 
played for a couple of hours, and played well, too. 
Shortly before eight o'clock the square became al- 
most deserted; after that hour, by order of the 
Military Governor, no civilian could walk the streets 
without a pass. 

The native Boer was little in evidence at any time, 
which made one realize what the demand was for 
able-bodied burghers at the front. The town was 
never very busy, business being constricted within 
narrow limits owing to the lack of supplies resulting 
from the monopoly of the railway by the army. 



CHAPTEE lY. 

Seeking the Elusiye Front. 

My visit to Lord Wolverton's little office in the 
posts aucl telegraphs building of the defunct Boer 
Government in the early morning of the third day 
was my last. He had come to sympathize with my 
eagerness to be off, and on this occasion he greeted 
me cheerily with the announcement that he had 
heard from Lord Stanley, who had wired that I 
might come up. Lord Wolverton at once ^T:ote me 
out a pass ; and within an hour, after hustling to- 
gether such food and clothing as I absolutely needed 
and swallowing a hasty breakfast, I was at the rail- 
way station. 

There th.ej told me that the train for the front left 
at nine, and that the way was clear to Smaldeel, which 
had been Lord Roberts's headquarters the day be- 
fore. But in accordance with what I soon found 
was the inevitable custom up country, it was long- 
after nine before we were under way. Attempts to 
keep a schedule had early proved abortive, and had 
long since been abandoned. The delaj^ in this par- 
ticular case was due to the necessity of getting off to 
Cape Town a trainload of sick and wounded soldiers. 

We finallv started a little after noon. There were 



SEEKING THE ELUSIVE FKONT. 19 

no such, luxuries as carriages. The train consisted 
entirely of trucks choked full of supplies for the 
front, and a guard's van at the rear end. Several 
hundred Tommies made up a i^art of the " supplies." 
They disposed themselves cheerfully on the top of the 
tarpaulins which covered the high-piled freight, with 
no shelter from the broiling African sun ; while the 
Major in charge, with a couple of lieutenants, a scout, 
a civilian supply agent, and myself, shared the van 
with the guard. There were not enough seats to go 
around, so most of us made ourselves comfortable as 
best we could among the boxes and kit-bags and 
various other packages and personal belongings with 
which the floor of the van was stre^NTi. 

It is about fifty miles by rail from Bloemfontein to 
Yet river, which turned out to be "Rail Head," or 
the terminus at that time of the road. The Boers 
had blown up the bridge, and beyond there we had 
to make our way to the front by more primitive means 
of transportation until the Royal Engineers and the 
Railway Pioneers had completed the " deviation," or 
temporary line across the river bed. x4iter working 
like beavers for three days and nights, they finished 
the job in record time on the following Sunday, when 
their supply trains were sent across on their way to 
the next break, at Doom river, some thirty miles be- 
yond. The same story had been re^Deated all the 
way up country from Colesburg. The Boers as they 



20 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

retreated blew up the bridges and ciilyerts, and the 
repairers, following after the advance guard as it 
cleared the country of the enemy, built their devia- 
tions across the various rivers and repaired the dam- 
aged culverts in many ingenious ways, that the 
precious supply trains might not be delayed a mo- 
ment more than was necessary. 

Our train took just seven hours to cover those fifty 
miles to Yet river. There we were all bundled out 
in the darkness to find ourselves on the edge of a 
camp occupied by some 2,000 troops, left behind to 
guard the mass of stores there accumulated after 
Lord Roberts's advance columns had driven off the 
Boers. 

The scout, who was bearing despatches to head- 
quarters, the supply agent, and myself, as the three 
travellers most eager to get to the front, had joined 
forces. Dumping our luggage out on the A^eldt be- 
side the line, we took turns in searching for some 
means of conveyance onward, two doing the search- 
ing while the third stayed behind to watch our pos- 
sessions. This lot at first fell to me. While waiting 
for the others to return, I was accosted by an officer 
on duty, a genial caiotain in the King's Royal Rifles, 
one of the famous Irish regiments whose valor had 
placed the shamrock in its present place of honor and 
inspired the Queen to make* her pilgrimage into the 
Emerald Isle. Capt. Harrison, I found, had spent 



SEEKING THE ELUSIVE FEONT. 21 

several years in my own far away country, within a 
few miles of my old home ; and out there on the veldt, 
under the Southern Cross and the bright stars of the 
southern firmament, with the light of camp-fires glim- 
mering about us, we became fast friends, he lending 
me much aid and comfort as a wanderer from old 
haunts of his. 

We had talked together for a half-hour or so when 
my two comi^anions returned to report that the ad- 
vance had moved on beyond Smaldeel, and that we 
could hardh" hope to catch up with it that night. 
Elliott, the sup]3ly agent, reported that a wagon had 
been placed at our disposal for the night in case we 
should fail to get on : and Farquhar, the scout, brought 
news of a Cape cart in cam^D which we might secure 
for the few days necessary for our journey. Elliott 
was for settling down in camp at once ; but Farquhar 
and I felt we ought to make one more effort to get 
on, convinced that if we travelled all night we might 
catch up with headquarters next day. But fate was 
against us. I found Captain Foote, the owner of the 
cart, bundled up in a greatcoat warming himself by a 
camp fire, but he was quite naturally unwilling to 
part wdth his vehicle, even temporarily. So we were 
forced to S]3end the night in camp. 

We proceeded to the wagon discovered by Elliott 
and there were served with a toothsome repast by 
two obliging Tommies. After satisfying a keen ap- 



22 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

petite with coffee, a substantial stew, and some bread 
and jam, we crawled into the wagon and, taking off 
only our spurs, rolled up in our karosses and sank 
into dreamless sleep. 

Next morning we were up at dawn. Elliott had 
found the wagon such a luxurious abode that he 
decided to wait and proceed by it ; but Farquhar and I 
concluded that we must push on at once. Searching 
out our friend Captain Foote, we finally, with his 
help, secured two nags, sorry enough to look upon, 
but promising to carry us at least another stage on 
our journey towards that elusive front. Farquhar 
had with him his saddle and bridle, but I was minus 
both, having perforce left them at Bloemfontein. 
After a good deal of rummaging, a dilapidated saddle 
was finally found, which had been taken from a 
strolling and suspected Kaffir the day before. It 
lacked girth and stirrup leathers, but to supply the 
former Farquhar dispensed with one of his ; and we 
improvised the latter with a strap for one and some 
twine for the other. My outfit, such as it was, was 
thus completed. I left most of my kit in the kindly 
charge of my Irish captain, and strapping my kaross 
and waterproof cloak behind my saddle and slinging 
a water-bottle and a haversack with two days' rations 
over my shoulders, I mounted my Rosinante. The 
get-up was so weird that one of the officers who had 
helped me patch it up insisted upon taking a photo- 



SEEKING THE ELU8IVE FRONT. 23 

graph of me on my mount, and I left the camp with 
the heartiest laughter ringing in my ears. 

Farquhar's Argentine and my sorrel Boer pony bore 
us safely across the Vet, and the first of the six miles 
to Smaldeel iDassed without incident. The country 
was hilly near the river, and we forbore to press our 
steeds. Then we struck the level veldt and, mindful 
of the advantage of a good start, sought to urge our 
steeds onward at a more lively pace. But that 
proved impossible. Neither whip nor spur could 
prevail upon our poor beasts to move beyond the 
slowest of walks. Three miles at a snail's pace were 
enough to convince us that we should never catch 
up with headquarters with such transport. To make 
any sort of a change, however, threatened to be a 
serious difficulty, if not an impossibility ; for we 
were following in the wake of thirty thousand 
mounted men, and the corpses, along the dusty road- 
side, of the animals that had succumbed to the 
strain put upon them warned us that we should be 
lucky indeed if we found any serviceable horseflesh 
left behind. Luck and our wits were our only re- 
sources. Push on we must; and we made the best 
of our way over the veldt towards Smaldeel, along a 
dusty road badly cut wp by the multitude of couAoys 
XDreceding us. Our horses faltered more and more 
with each lengthening step, and threatened to drop 
dead at any moment ; but finally those six miles were 



24 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

coYerecl. We liad left Yet river camp at 8:30 ; it was 
nearly noon of a veiy hot day when we reached 
Smaldeel, a little collection of poor houses and 
hovels clustered around the railway station. 

We had already decided that our onlj- chance to 
get on lay in finding some CajDe cart and command- 
eering that ; serviceable mounts were clearty out of 
the question. Our relief was great, therefore, when 
we caught sight of several carts, clumsy vehicles on 
two wheels, built on the principle of a hansom but 
much less carefully balanced. It still remained,' 
however, to secure two horses to drag one. The out- 
look was discouraging. There were several ponies 
in sight, cropx)ing painfulh^ at the veldt grass or 
standing with drooped heads in some of the yards ; 
but there never was a more dejected and hopeless- 
looking lot. But after a search we stumbled upon a 
corral of sore-backed creatures, some of them show- 
ing signs of not having lost all strength and spirit ; 
and to us as we stood looking them over came a stout 
man who confessed to the name of Schwartz and 
proved to be very timid. These were Government 
horses, he apologetically explained, that had been 
placed in his charge to recover of thek wounds, and 
under no account, his instructions were, was he to part 
with them. We informed Schwartz, however, that 
we were under orders to make all haste to the front 
with desx^atches, and that we must have two of the 



SEEKING THE ELUSIVE FRONT. 25 

horses and a set of harness. Schwartz, with many 
misgivings, finally gave in, and undertook to fit us 
out on our signing a receipt for the animals and 
promising to restore them next day. None of them 
looked as if they could survive, but w^e had to take 
that risk. We spent two hours in selecting two that 
would consent to go in harness wdthout balking ; 
then transferred our kit to the cart, made a hasty 
meal of bully beef and bad bread, supplied by the 
good-natured mother of ten dirty brats, and, discard- 
ing our two wrecks of saddle-horses, started on for 
Zand river, twenty-four miles away, wdiere inquiry 
led us to believe we should find headquarters. 

We started on across the veldt at a fair pace, and 
soon began to pass supply wagons drawn by six, 
eight, and ten span of oxen and mules, which gave us 
some idea of the transport problem upon which Lord 
Kitchener was engaged. The bodies of horses and 
oxen which had fallen in their tracks grew more 
frequent as we toiled our well-nigh trackless Avay 
under the blazing sun, the boundless veldt all around 
us, dotted with innumerable ant-hills, rising often to 
a height of two feet, and relieved only occasionally 
by a few isolated kopjes. The veldt was all of the 
dreary khaki color, with only here and there patches 
of green as we drew near and passed a pool of stag- 
nant water. The scene gave us a hint of the task 
England had before her in carrying on a w^ar in an 



26 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

almost arid conutry 7,000 miles aTvaj^ from her base 
of supplies. 

Thirteen miles out of Smaldeel we came upon what 
was surely a prosperous farm before the war. There 
we replaced one of our horses with a little mare, 
which looked fit enough, thoug-h in foal. Farquhar 
had had to use signs in making our wishes known ; 
the white people had abandoned the place, and the 
few blacks left behind spoke nothing but Dutch and 
Kaffir, in neither of which tongues was he proficient. 
However, this was war, and our appearance of being 
fully able to take what we wanted discouraged the 
Kaffirs from going too far in their attempts to mis- 
understand us. Weeks later, by one of those happy 
chances which war brings, Farquhar and I met again 
in Johannesburg, and the first question he asked was 
about the little mare who had served us so well. 

The rest of that day's journey we made at a fair 
pace. Ant-hills grew more numerous and kopjes less 
so as the veldt flattened out into a boundless, sun- 
baked plain, with no trees and no shadows save our 
own. A few miles beyond the farm we passed a large 
convoy halted by the side of a pool. The animals 
had been outspanned, and scores of native drivers 
were busy in their own noisy, lazy fashion watering 
the animals. We stopped for a few moments to ex- 
change greetings and surmises with the officer in 
charge of the few troox3S forming the convoj^'s guard. 



SEEKING THE ELUSIVE FRONT. 27 

and then resumed our journey. At Doom river we 
found another wrecked bridge and overtook and 
IDassed another convoy streaming across the drift. 
The passage of this river, which was nothing but a 
creek, with a tiny stream of water meandering at the 
foot of the deep-cut channel between steep, rugged 
banks, we made without much difficulty, thanks to 
the lightness of our load. Proceeding along on the 
northern side, our surroundings repeated themselves 
monotonously: more dead animals, more ant-hills, and 
fewer and fewer kopjes. No wonder the Boers had 
skedaddled; there wasn't cover for even a hare. 
Presently the sun sank below the horizon, and the 
sky blazed out into the glorious colors which are 
such a revelation to dwellers in other climes. The 
after-glow faded, and soon we were jogging along 
under a brilliant moon and a sky studded with twink- 
ling stars, among which Yenus, sinking slowly into 
the west, reigned easily supreme, her splendor dim- 
med but little by the moon. 

About an hour after sunset we gained the crest of 
a slight rise, and a wide circle of low -lying flame 
came into view. We thought it the camj) -fires of 
the Zand River camp, and congratulated ourselves 
on approaching our journey's end ; but a nearer view 
showed us that it was only the veldt grass burning. 
We drove on another mile before unmistakable camj)- 
fires twinkled before us, on higher ground ahead, 



28 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

wMcli we rightly assumed to be beyond the river. 
We had now caught up with the largest convoy of 
the day, and were threading our way XDast innumera- 
ble wagons, heavily laden, slowly drawn along bj' 
long lines of patient oxen and straining mules, the 
negroes walking alongside or running up to the lead- 
ers or back again to stir u^d some unwilling worker, 
crying strange cries and dexterously plying twenty- 
foot whips. Troopers trotted by, carbine slung on 
shoulder and blanket rolled behind the saddle, and 
now and then an officer wrapiDed in his great-coat 
galloped iDast in the dust. 

Yirginia was the name of the little station this side 
of the Zand, now a bustling camp ; and here we 
finally drew up a little after seven o'clock, checked 
by an impassable line of crowded wagons, with Tom- 
mies all around us prej)aring the evening- meal about 
the camp-fires, chatting and joking gaily. Nothing 
ever seemed to disturb Tommy's equanimity in camp. 
He put up with all sorts of hardships with the same 
careless good-nature. It was a cheery sight to watch 
these dust-stained warriors peacefully cooking and 
tasting, bantering each other with good-natured chaff; 
and as we looked about us, and noted the ever-chang- 
ing lights and shadows, as the fires flared ui3 and 
sank down again, throwing the forms into clear relief 
and anon leavino- them in g-loom ag-ain, we too forsfot 
our trials of the day. It didn't take us long to find 



SEEKING THE ELUSIVE FRONT. 29 

that the drift was blocked by the transport and that 
it would be hopeless to attempt to get across that 
night. Headquarters were only two miles beyond, 
however, we were told, and we felt confident of 
catching u^ in the morning. 

Outsi^anning, we picketed ourwxary horses behind 
the cart, gave them feed, and then sought out a spot 
to lie upon. Uj) against the side of a shanty we 
found a pile of corncobs — mealies, as they call them 
in South Africa — and of these we made a clean and 
by no means uncomfortable couch. We then boiled 
some water over a neighboring fire, brewed some 
" tabloid tea," and with that and some more bully 
beef that had come all the way from a Chicago pack- 
ing-house, we made a good meal. At nine, we rolled 
up on our corncob couch, and, warm and snug in 
spite of the cold, we dropped asleep under the stars. 
I woke up about one, disturbed by a wandering pony 
which looked like one of ours. I knew we were lost 
if either of them wandered away into that mass of 
animals, and so jumped up to head him off. But he 
was a stranger. Our two were standing quietly 
where we had picketed them, sleeping that standing 
sleex3 of their kind. It was an encouraging sign — if 
they had been lying down I should have feared they 
were played out. But they had grazed bountifully 
on the veldt scrub, and were fit enough, though not 
to be too hard pressed. I turned in again, and next 
woke with the sun in my eyes, just above the horizon. 



CHAPTEK Y. 

The Feoxt at Last. 

More tea and bully beef, with some biscuits, formed 
our breakfast next morning, and inspanning we were 
soon wending a very devious way among tlie still 
crowded wagons towards tlie drift. They had been 
crossing all night by the light of the moon until it 
set, but the line still stretched far back towards 
Doom river. We made our way to the bank, and 
there seemed no nearer the other side, for there was 
no break in the line of wagons on the drift. But here 
my companion's despatches stood us in good stead 
again, and an obliging transport officer halted the line 
to give our cart a place. The way across was steep 
and difficult ; it looked impassable for the heavier 
wagons ; but we finally reached the other side, and 
so did they, by dint of much lashing and j^elling. On 
the other side we found that the advance guard, after 
overcoming a rather stout resistance from the enemy 
the day before, had halted not two but seven miles 
further on and had resumed their march at dawn. 
There was nothing for it but to peg along ; and this 
we did, stopping every few hours by a wayside well 
and waiting cur turn at the water with the hurrying 
soldiers. AVe were soon fairly \\-p with the rear guard^ 



THE FRONT AT LAST. 31 

and troops were all about us. Our i^ace grew slower 
and slower as tlie hot day wore on, for we did not 
dare urge our ponies too fast, a circumstance that 
gave our journey its chief monotony. But towards 
the middle of the afternoon we passed the balloon, 
which had long been the most prominent feature of 
the landscaiDe, and a little later caught sight of the 
farmhouse, nestling among some poplars, where Lord 
Roberts and his staff had i^itched camp for the 
night. 

Half an hour later we had reached our journey's 
end. The flower of England's army was all about us, 
and there, unostentatiously drawn up behind the red- 
walled farmhouse was " Bobs's " wagon with his office 
tent pitched against it. Two armed Sikhs stood im- 
movable at the entrance. Within, we learned that he 
and Kitchener were deep in counsel. Staff officers 
were everywhere, copying despatches, coming or go- 
ing with reiDorts or orders, or washing away the stains 
of the day's march ; horses were iDicketed in groups and 
long lines here and there, while troopers groomed and 
fed them, and other Tommies pitched tents or busied 
themselves at fires brewing the four o'clock tea. The 
tents and bivouacs of the officers crowded the exten- 
sive farmyard, but the troops were not allowed to 
pitch theirs, as the army was to move again at dawn, 
the commander-in-chief being resolved to waste no 
time, but to keep the enemy moving back till Kroon- 



32 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

stad, then the capital, and now but a day's march 
away, was in his hands. 

After outspanning and watering our tired ponies, 
my companion and I separated, he to deliver his de- 
spatches, and I to search for Lord Stanley, the cen- 
sor. I found him stripped to the waist, enjoying the 
luxury of a bath in a portable tub. He greeted me 
most cordially, and sympathized with my troubles at 
Bloemf ontein, which he said I might have been spared. 
In fact, nobody could have been more courteous or 
more helpful than Lord Stanley was to me. Later in 
the evening I had the official authority to go where 
I pleased with the army. Returning from his tent I 
caught sight of Lord Roberts himself, standing near 
his headquarters. The familiar figure was alert and 
erect as ever, and in his eyes was the look which was 
so true an index of all he had done and all he yet 
would do. It w^as equally easy to understand how 
he could lead such an army to s^Dlendid achievements 
from which under him there could be no turning back, 
and why every Tommy in the ranks spoke of him af- 
fectionately as " The Little Man " and adored him. 

I walked by, to take a cup of tea with a genial of- 
ficer of his staff, who in the true comradeship of the 
field offered me the hospitality of his tent ; and later 
I dined with the Earl of Kerry, A. D. C, at his mess, 
where I also fared most enjoy ably and in the best of 
company. Afterwards Lord Kerry and I strolled over 



THE FRONT AT LAST. 33 

to the camp of the Colclstreams, where I renewed ac- 
quaintance with Captain Marker, who had been a fel- 
low-passenger on the " Scot." Leaving him strug- 
gling to get supper for his men, whose supplies had 
not yet come up, we strolled back towards headquar- 
ters, and shortly afterwards separated for the night. 
At my own bivouac I found my colleague, Barnes of 
the Daily Mail, with whom I discussed my pro- 
spective journey back to Bloemfontein, and thence to 
Kimberley and Fourteen Streams, to join General 
Hunter. Soon Farquhar joined us with the good 
news that he had got his commission under General 
Pole-Carew, a fact which I regretted only because it 
would deprive me of his company back. Then we 
turned in for another night on the veldt. 

At dawn we were up again, and I took a position 
of vantage whence to see the army move on. The 
advance started as soon as it was light. Half an hour 
later the whole force was on the march, moving off in 
serried ranks towards Kroonstad, which Lord Roberts 
entered without o^Dposition that afternoon. There 
was no glitter of accoutrements and no brilliancy of 
uniform in that khaki-clad array, but the sight was 
none the less inspiring, well calculated to convince 
the Boer of his folly in challenging Britannia to gird 
on her sword and go forth to war. By seven o'clock 
regiment after regiment was streaming by, and clouds 
of dust obscured the view ahead and far out on either 



34 THE CHASE OF DE ^^T. 

flank. The balloon cliTision had started before all, and 
the huge, yellowish bulk of that monster was already 
far in the lead. Along the side of the line of march 
the transport cattle were being inspanned and started 
off, and to the rear as far back as the eye conld reach 
troops eager to catch up were streaming on. And 
meanwhile " Bobs " himself, attended by Lord Kitch- 
ener and the rest of the staff, had quietly mounted, 
and with a brief word or two the little headquarters 
cavalcade had trotted off, leaving the supply wagons 
to bring up the rear. I Avatched for a while the work 
of obliterating all signs of the camp, and then, as 
time was precious, inspanned ni}^ iDonies and started 
back to retrace alone my track to Bloemf ontein. ^Ij 
rations had given out, but a fellow correspondent 
provided me with what I needed, and it onlj^ re- 
mained for me to x^ick up a black boj^ somewhere 
along the route to be fully equi^oped. 

Going back, I made better time at first. At Yen- 
tersburg road I stopped to make inquiries about 
getting a servant, and had the good fortune to find 
the railway inspector looking for just such a chance 
to get to Yet river, my own objective, where I could 
catch the train for Bloemf ontein. The inspector, a 
long-transplanted Scotchman who, though taciturn, 
proved of great assistance, got his blanket and water- 
bottle, and, jumping into the cart beside me, we 
started on again. 



THE FRONT AT LAST. 35 

Reacliing Zand river, my camping-place of two 
nights before, after a stage marked only by. increasing 
signs of distress from one of tlie ponies, we ont- 
spanned for lunch and a two hours' rest. The pony 
in question seemed nearly dead beat, and I began to 
fear our further progress would be blocked again for 
lack of animals. But after drinking three buckets of 
water he consented to eat some mealies, and shortly 
before five o'clock we felt justified in starting on 
again with him. The little mare, meanwhile, had 
proved herself to be made of excellent stuff. 

We pushed on for a ganger's cottage along the 
railway, some six miles beyond Zand river, where 
dwelt a friend of my com^oanion's. My good fortune 
in securing him for a fellow-traveller was now demon- 
strated, for he was able to promise a swifter mode of 
conveyance which should enable us to get at least as 
far as Smaldeel that night. It Avas evident that my 
weak pony would not be good for much more. Only 
by incessant lashing could we get him to move faster 
than a walk, and wielding the whip took all the atten- 
tion of one of us, while the other managed the reins. 
I put the beast down as good for just about the six 
miles we must cover, if we did not want to be stranded 
on the desolate veldt. If we could cover that, how- 
ever, we should be all right, promised my ins^oector. 
At the cottage, he said, we could shift to a railway 
hand-car, here called a trolley, and on that, as it was 



36 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

a down grade nearly all the way to Smaldeel, we could 
make good progress the rest of the way. 

Two miles out from Zand river night fell. Fortu- 
nately we still had the moon, and thus could see our 
way. But that last four miles in the Cape cart 
proved, none the less, exciting enough. The road 
across the veldt, such as it was, had been rendered 
so hea^^ by the passing of the miles of transport 
wagons that we had to keep to the sides. That took us 
among the ant-hills. The diminutive heaps we meet 
with at home are nothing to worry about ; but these 
substantial structures erected by the African white 
ant are amply solid and high enough to upset a Cape 
cart. The moon furnished barely enough light to en- 
able us to see these formidable obstructions just before 
we were on them. At a walk we might have avoided 
them easily enough. But at that pace our ponies 
could not have made two miles an hour, and so walk- 
ing was out of the question. We decided that we must 
risk an upset in order to reach our destination in time, 
and that the iDonies must be forced into a run even 
though they might drop dead before their task was 
over. So I gathered up the reins, and my companion, 
leaning out over the dashboard, laid on with the 
whij). We succeeded in infusing new life into the 
animals, and in a few moments we were bowling 
along at what was, in comparison with the other, a 
rattling pace. It took all my attention to avoid the 



THE FEONT AT LAST. 37 

ant-hills. Many of them we did not see (they are the 
same color as the veldt itself) until they loomed up 
between the ponies' heads, and I had to keep them 
steady to let the mounds pass between the wheels. 
Once, in spite of all care, we did hit one, and nearly 
went over. Another time half the cart, as it seemed, 
disappeared into a yawning ant-bear hole, and again 
we were nearly gone. But finally the cottage ap- 
peared, a dark shadow ahead, and, to make a long 
story short, we reached it safely. The ponies were 
left in good hands, and after a cup of hot coffee, pro- 
vided by the ganger's family, the trolley was fitted to 
the track, and, shifting our kit to it, we settled our- 
selves for the last stage of our journey. The trolley 
was simply a small flat truck. The motive power was 
furnished by two niggers, who ran behind and pushed, 
imitating as they did so the puffing sound of an 
engine. After practice, my inspector told me, they 
could push such a load up grade at the rate of five 
miles an hour. Of the twenty miles to Smaldeel that 
lay before us, however, all but six were down grade, 
along which the trolley would go by its own momen- 
tum with no other effort necessary than to control the 
brakes. 

It was seven o'clock when four of us took our seats 
on this rolling platform, our legs hanging over, for 
one of the strangest rides I ever took. The two black 
boys started the thing going. They ran along behind 



38 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

for a few miuntes and then took a flying leap aboard, 
and we went rushing- along at a good twenty miles an 
hour. At first it was exhilarating enough, after our 
previous slow progress in the Cape cart ; but after a 
while, as clumps of bushes rushed by in the dark and 
we passed oyer the culverts with a roar, I began to 
wonder whether the brakes would hold, whether the 
gangers had not overlooked some rails misplaced by 
the Boers, and how many pieces there would be to x^ick 
up if we jumped the track. None of these thoughts 
disturbed my companions, however ; they had been 
" working on the railway " for years, and midnight 
rushes of this description were everyday incidents to 
them. They sat carelessly in their places and uncon- 
cernedly swapped yarns about trivial incidents of the 
war. 

Nothing happened during the first thirteen miles, 
which we did in less than an hour. Then we drew up 
at another section station, paused for another cup of 
coffee, changed trolleys, and went on with a new brace 
of boys and another section foreman on the box seat 
in place of the one who had started with us. We now 
struck the up-grade stretch, and I curled up and went 
to sleep, soothed by the puffing and j)anting of our 
human engines, whom I drowsily resolved to present 
with two bob ai^iece after they had got us up. I woke 
up an hour later to fijid our car drawn up at another 
cottage and another transfer of trolleys and crew go- 



THE FRONT AT LAST. 39 

ing" on. The last two boys had disappeared in the 
darkness, thus losing the two bob, a fact which I sin- 
cerely regretted. 

It was now eight miles down grade to Smaldeel, I 
was told, as we shoved off. The first few miles went 
by smoothly enough, but then what I had inwardly 
expected all along happened. We jumped a switch, 
and in a twinkling I was gazing u^Don my comioanions 
sprawling on the ground about the car, which had 
given a few clumsy jumps over the ties and then 
come to a stop with a hea^y list to starboard. I lis- 
tened for moans, but heard welcome laughter instead ; 
and in a moment everybody picked himself up, and we 
all reported no injuries. We got the car back on the 
rails, and amid the chuckles of the negroes resumed 
our descent. Shortly afterwards we reached Smal- 
deel in safety, and building a fire in the grate in the 
woman's waiting-room at the station, and partaking 
of a cold supper, the inspector and I disposed our- 
selves for the night. 



CHAPTEE YI. 

The Tast Land of the Boees. 

Next morning, after some cliaiing delay, we pro- 
ceeded for Yet river by another trolley. There were 
several broken culverts along our route, but an inex- 
haustible suj^ply of trolleys and trolley experts, and 
we finally whirled down to the bank of the Yet river 
at about eleven o'clock of that Sunday morning. The 
camp there was a familiar sight, and there was the 
railway, clear to Bloemf ontein and Kimberley. I was 
soon among friends again, and was told that a train 
would leave at noon. I also found a Captain Creagh, 
of the King's Royal Eifles, the same Irish regiment 
of my friend Captain Harrison, who was also g'oing 
down to Bloemfontein, and we foregathered. 

But we were doomed to disappointment again. 
The troops, after working night and day since Wed- 
nesday, had just completed the deviation across the 
river, and every engine in the place was needed to 
get the stalled supply-trains across. The delay 
lengthened, and it was midnight before we finally 
got off. But those hospitable Irish ofl&cers took the 
best of care of me, and my only grief was that I should 
probably miss the next morning's train to Kimberley. 
And I did. 

That last stage of my journey back to Bloemfontein 



THE VAST LAND OF THE BOEES. 41 

I j)assed with Captain Creagh in an oi^en coal-truck. 
But tlie nio-lit was the most comfortable of all, not- 
withstanding-, for we rigged up an effective shelter 
with a huge tarpaulin, and slept like tops till well 
after sunrise, when we found ourselves once more 
back in Steyn's ancient capital. 

After such a journey as that which I had just com- 
pleted, one begins to comprehend something of the 
characteristics of the mighty continent of Africa. 
Looking back upon the closer acquaintance which 
my later experiences gave, I find that the impression 
made by the surroundings in which the British nation 
found its latest opi^ortunity to prove the stuff it is 
made of is still a very strong one. No one with eyes 
to see can look out upon a South African landscape 
without being sensible of that feeling of awe which 
great antiquity always inspires. The mystery and 
the indefinable charm of vastness and of age are in 
that ancient land made manifest on a mighty scale 
unknown in more familiar spots of the earth, where 
man and nature are closer allies and friends. A land 
where the light of day is the fiercest and the dark of 
night the blackest one can know anywhere, nature in 
those great spaces, which are still almost all her own, 
seems as nowhere else to be governing her kingdom 
on lines too great for man to trace. Looking forth 
from some solitary eminence, man feels a puny atom 
indeed when he realizes that that horizon which he 



42 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

sees so clearly is three score miles away. The yelclt 
of the great South African plateau looks as ancient as 
the sea. The great black rocks that crop out here 
and there seem to lie just where they fell ages back, 
after that mighty convulsion which heaved up Africa 
out of the sea ; and the softly rounded outlines of the 
kopjes and the mountain ranges are the outlines of 
the everlasting hills. Earth and sky seem full of 
ancient mysteries, as Rider Haggard must have felt 
when he chose those surroundings for so many of his 
weird tales of imagination. The whole atmosphere 
of Africa suggests irresistibly the mysterious and the 
unknowable. 

To this effect the wonderful clearness of the air 
lends a large share. To see such an extent of country 
spread out before one like an open palm ; to note 
the main features of earth and sky repeating them- 
selves endlessly and changelessly, is to gain a first 
impression which one can never forget, though he 
find it far beyond him to define. To get such a range 
of vision in our own land we should have to go far 
up from the earth in a balloon, and then the effect 
would not be the same, for from a balloon we should 
simply see a landscape in miniature ; a field become 
the corner of a garden, a city shrunk to the propor- 
tions of a doll-house. In South Africa cities are few 
and far apart : up in a balloon there nothing would 
shrink — one would simply see more vastness. 



THE VAST LAND OF THE BOERS. 43 

For it is the vastness of an open plain, the hugeness 
of black volcanic rocks as large as mountains, that are 
characteristic of South Africa. The few cities — Cape 
Town, Bloemfontein, Kimberly, Johannesburg — and 
the little rural towns and villages scattered far apart, 
are all alike hopelessly dwarfed by the vastness of 
the silent veldt around them, out of which you come 
upon them as upon a ship in mid-ocean, and by which 
you are swallowed up again when you leave them 
behind. One is haunted in South Africa with the 
idea that man and all his works are insignificant amid 
nature's heights and breadths and mighty distances. 
The equatorial sun is sovereign lord of all ; nature is 
here the giantess unshackled by any Lilliputian 
bonds. And man, constrained to adapt himself to 
her huge scale, finds that a thousand-acre lot must 
be his barnyard, wherein the strutting fowls are 
grown to stately ostriches and the monstrous cattle 
wear horns that would shame a Texas steer. 

Such is the land which the degenerate Boer de- 
clared to be too small to contain himself and so much 
as one Englishman besides, when he formed those 
petty plans of his to drive the English into the sea ; 
and yet in all its length and breadth Oom Paul, when 
England aroused herself at last, could find no spot 
remote enough to hide in — no cover into which, 
sooner or later, Tommy Atkins would not find his 
way. 



44 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Contributing also to the sense of vastness wliicli 
overwhelms one in South Africa is the lack of tree 
or shrub in so much of the boundless veldt. What- 
ever it may be in summer, in the rainless winter 
season it wears the dull yellowish-brown hue of 
khaki ; and one may travel over it for days without 
seeing a single green thing. Alone on such a sea, 
one feels alone indeed. And that feeling takes pos- 
session of one even with an army for company, 
whether on the march, steadily and silently pushing 
onward, or at rest in camp, with tents and camp- 
fires gleaming, artillery and cavalry horses picketed 
all around, and cattle grazing far out on every side. 

Geologically as well as historically, Africa is one 
of the oldest continents ; and the venerable appear- 
ance of its stocks and stones impresses one as pro- 
foundly as the vastness of its empty spaces. In the 
seamed, bronzed face of Table Mountain, that majes- 
tic sentinel of the Cape of Good Ho]3e, one not only 
sees the traces of the passage of unnumbered ages, 
but the imagination is carried back still further into 
the remotest past in the effort to guess how early it 
was in the world's morning that the peak of that 
huge rock was razed off. And everywhere from the 
Cape northwards as far as Pretoria, which was the 
limit of the author's journeyings, one notes the signs 
of age. The configuration of the plains of the great 
plateau, which ranges from the Great Karroo on the 



THE VAST LAND OF THE BOERS. 45 

south to the high veldt of what was but lately the 
Transvaal, is such as one imagines that of the bottom 
of the sea to be ; and the koj^jes rising everywhere 
out of the undulating veldt, and the higher hills and 
mountains marking the course of the Yaal river, 
tracing the northern boundary of Basutoland, and 
sheltering the golden Witwatersrand around Johan- 
nesburg, all alike have the softly-rounded outlines 
which the forces of nature must have ages of undis- 
turbed labor to fashion. 

It was natural enough that the Boers, who had 
lived long enough in South Africa to become per- 
fectly familiar with the features of the country, 
should find it easy at first to resist with signal 
success the advance of a British army as large as 
BuUer's, operating in a country as new to them as it 
was well known to Cronje and Botha and De Wet. 
The wildernesses of the veldt are traversed by only a 
few lines of single track, narrow gauge railway. The 
main line northward from Cape Town remains a 
single line until it reaches De Aar Junction, over 
400 miles away. There it branches, the main line 
continuing northward along the western border of 
the Free State and the Transvaal to Kimberly and 
Mafeking, the latter town being 850 miles from 
Cape Town ; while the branch goes southeastward 
to Naanw^DOort Junction, and thence northward, with 
a slight trend eastward, to Bloemfontein, Johannes- 



46 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

burg, and Pretoria, the last some 900 miles north- 
ward from the sea. This main line, the compara- 
tively short line running west and southwest from 
Johannesburg to Klerksdorp through Kruegersdorp 
and Pot chef stroom (the old Boer capital), and the 
line from Johannesburg eastward to Portuguese 
East Africa, are the only roads affording anything 
but bullock and horse transport across the country 
of the Boers. A glance at any map of South Africa 
will show what vast tracts of territory remained to 
be traversed by the ancient methods of stage-coach, 
bullock wagon, and Cape cart. 

Lord Roberts naturally made the railway line his 
main line of communication. But columns had to be 
sent off east and west to overrun the whole country, 
and these columns had to depend for the transport of 
the great stores of food, ammunition, and the thousand 
and one things that go to make up the iinpedimenta of 
a great army in the field upon bullocks, mules, and 
horses, which at best can make but twenty or thirty 
miles a day. It was in doing the endless trekking 
which the British operations under such circum- 
stances entailed that Tommy Atkins and his officers 
learned to curse South Africa during those moments 
when the strain seemed almost too much for flesh and 
blood to bear. Nobody complained when the fight 
was on ; when there were Boer trenches to be carried 
or a target to be hit. But when the enemy took to 



THE VAST LAXD OF THE BOERS. 47 

his heels, and, marching with that extraordinary mo- 
bility of his, kept always a day ahead of his pursuers ; 
when the troops had often to follow along a doubtful 
trail over vast plains which seemed interminable, 
around ko^DJes from some snug eyrie of which the 
baggage train might at any moment be threatened 
by Boers who could always get away before they 
could be come up with ; through defiles and across 
drifts that always proved too much for some of the 
patient animals ; under a blazing sun by day and in 
bitter cold by night ; with water scarce and bad, and 
firewood sometimes scarcer still : it was under cii*- 
cumstances such as these that Tommy drank deep of 
that drudgery and monotony and apparent impotence 
that compose the most galling bitterness of war. 
There was little faltering when the " kerchunk, ker- 
chiTuk " of Mausers was making music in the soul ; 
when the deep bass of the field-guns was waking the 
echoes of the hills ; when the enemy had been at last 
located in front of right or left or centre. It was the 
endless trekking, trekking, trekking ; halting wearily 
in the dark and starting off again before dawn, that 
wore out stout hearts of man and beast. One reached 
the summit of one ridge strong in the hope that the 
ofoal must be in sisrht from there, only to find another 
and still other ridges beyond which in their turn 
must be traA^ersed. The veldt looks bare and level 
U13 to the very skyline, sixty miles away ; but in real- 



48 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

ity it is a succession of hills and valleys tliat lie be- 
tween ; and in its slow and toilsome progress forward 
the long line of march was hidden from the distant 
observer as often as it was revealed. And the roads ! 
They are just as hoofs and wheels have made them : 
hard and smooth only where the soil is of a character 
to resist wear and tear ; and where it is soft and sandy, 
heavy as a ploughed field. During all their years of 
occupancy of the land the Boers have never expended 
an hour of labor in the improvement of the roads. 
They have contented themselves with devising carts 
and wagons of exceptional strength to withstand the 
strains that they will not labor to lessen, and in de- 
veloping- a race of draught animals of unusual hardi- 
ness. The idea of making an ally of nature occurs 
to them but seldom, and is acted upon only by the 
few who deserve to be called enterprising. 

The lack of water during the long dry season of 
winter, when nearly all the streams run dry, is an- 
other characteristic of South Africa which may be 
traced to the indolence of the Boer. We saw a typi- 
cal illustration of this on the march of General Hun- 
ter's division from Yryburg northward and eastward 
into the Transvaal to Lichtenburg. During eight 
days of trekking the troops depended for water upon 
a few tanks while near the railway, and thereafter 
upon brackish pools, sometimes twenty feet below 
the surface, known in the Dutch jargon as pans, 



THE VAST LAND OF THE BOERS. 49 

and an occasional small lake where a farmer of the 
rarer type had bnilt a dam across a stream and thus 
held the water prisoner, truly in durance vile. For 
days one marched twenty miles at a stretch without 
encountering even a brackish i3ool ; and when it was 
found the water was too often i^oisoned with the 
germs of typhoid. Under such circumstances it was 
natural that the veldt, which is almost iDerfectly 
level in that region, should be little more than a 
parched desert, without a tree or even a shrub as far 
as the eye could reach to relieve the overpowering 
monotony of vast tracts. I well remember the joy of 
our small advance party one blazing noonday when 
we caught sight of a clump of half a dozen green- 
leaved willows beside a well wherein there still re- 
mained a few feet of stagnant water. Our meal 
under that shade was the pleasantest we had tasted 
in a week. But even that simple solace was denied 
to the main force following us, for there was not room 
under that green awning for more than half a dozen 
at a time. 

And yet those very trees were a rebuke to Boer 
indolence. They drew their sustenance from an in- 
exhaustible supply of water that only w^anted a little 
labor to bring it u^d to the surface, within reach of 
the poorest thirsty man or beast. Men who know 
that arid country well have told me that almost 
everywhere, at a depth of twenty or thirty feet, water 



50 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

is abundant. A sunken shaft and a windmill are the 
simple arts needed to make such a desert blossom 
like the rose. And so it doubtless will be when 
British law and order invite the pastorally inclined 
to make their homes in a land which offers a far 
greater reward to the industrious than many a tract 
now flourishing like the green bay tree under other 
suns and stars. 

Most of the towns and hamlets and isolated farms 
scattered over South Africa reveal the same charac- 
teristics. A very few (more's the pity ! ), generously 
adorned with close-set trees, blooming with gardens, 
alive with sleek cattle and healthy fowls, show what 
man can do if he will. All about the country are 
scattered Kaffir kraals, set down amid rich mealie 
fields and melon patches, each hut of which is a 
model of cleanliness and prospering thrift. The skins 
of the occupants are black, and their faces are not 
beautiful according to our Caucasian standards ; but 
many of them have the bodies and limbs of Apollos 
and Yenuses, and they are cleaner under their gaudy 
blankets and furs even than are their floors. Other 
abodes of the Boer, by far the greater number — farms 
with their rude hovels built of sun-baked clay, with 
ragged thatch of rotting straw ; villages of galvan- 
ized-iron shanties or squat, one-storied buildings of 
wood, with broken windows and decaying stoep — 
show what the white man of the country is generally 



THE VAST LAND OF THE BOERS. 51 

content with. The Boer has built many pretentious 
town halls and government building-s of enduring 
stone ; but he is generally satisfied to dwell himself 
in what his cleanly and virile forbears of France and 
Holland would deem no better than a pig-sty. 

But the Boer is not what he once was. He has 
lived too long in an unnatural isolation to preserve 
his ancient virtues ; and South Africa, " the grave of 
reputations," has sucked from him most of his old 
virility and is dragging down a once respectable race 
to slow and sure decay. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

Fitting Out foe the Front. 

The roundabout railway journey I had to take to 
reach Kimberley from Bloemfontein would have been 
much more dreary than it was in any but an un- 
familiar country, where there was much that was 
new and strange to claim the attention. We had to 
go all the way back to De Aar Junction before get- 
ting the train for the north, and there being no at- 
tempt to make close connections, I had to spend four 
dreary midnight hours on a cold and cheerless sta- 
tion platform that I never want to see again, by night 
or by day. The train from the Cape finally came in, 
however, and I was soon fast asleep in a fairly com- 
fortable berth which I had the good luck to find un- 
occupied. 

There were fewer delays beyond De Aar, that X3art 
of the Colony having by this time been jDurged of the 
Boers ; and on the evening of that day I reached 
Kimberley. The town was chiefly conspicuous at 
first sight for the huge piles of gray earth on its 
outskirts, that mark the entrances to the diamond 
mines, and for the galvanized-iron shanties that con- 
stitute the greater number of its buildings. 

I was now within easy distance of Fourteen 



FITTING OUT FOE THE FRONT. 53 

Streams; it only remained to i3rocure the outfit 
wherewith to accompany the army. We corre- 
spondents had to i^rovide our own transport, and 
generally "find ourselves" in everything save army 
rations and army forage, for which we were entitled 
to draw upon the Army Service Corps at the rate of 
four shillings a day for each man's ration and five 
shillings for a day's supply of forage for our animals. 
The next morning I found an honest auctioneer 
who contracted to furnish a Cape cart, three ponies, 
harness, and body servant complete. We wasted no 
time in coming to terms, and before sunset the outfit 
was assembled on the edge of the public square 
ready for my approval. Everything was satisfactory 
except two of the ponies and the servant. The for- 
mer I had to send back for exchange the next day ; 
but as substitutes I secured two excellent beasts, 
one of which, AYolf , survived all our experiences, and 
faithfully earned the reward which on x^arting with 
him I stipulated he should receive : three months of 
absolute rest and generous feeding. To obtain a 
reliable black boy proA^ed a more difiicult task. The 
one selected by the auctioneer was drunk when I 
arrived, and was at once dismissed. I looked over 
the dozen or so who had gathered about to see the 
departure, and found none of them prepossessing. 
There was one, however, whose appearance i3romised 
sobriety at least ; but he flinched when I explained to 



54 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

him that lie would have to go with the army, and he 
also stipulated that his weekly wage should be sent 
back to his wife at Kimberley. On that I let him go. 
Finally, among the others who were eagerly offering 
their services and protesting that they were eager to 
face any danger, my eye fell upon a Cape boy of 
shabby appearance, but with a steadiness in his eye 
that I liked ; and I beckoned him out of the crowd. 
His name was Lewis. He too was married, he said, 
but was willing to receive his wages in person. The 
auctioneer vouched for his good character ; and satis- 
fied that he would do, I engaged him on the spot, on 
the condition that he bring my outfit safely to War- 
renton within good time. This he did, and during 
all our subsequent wanderings proved a good and 
faithful servant. 

My saddle-horse was of the polo-pony breed, small, 
wiry, and sound, save as to his knees. He later de- 
veloped an incorrigible tendency to fall do^Ti at reg- 
ular and brief intervals, and a few weeks later I seized 
an opportunity to trade him off for a less dapper but 
much more sober and reliable animal. 

The road between Kimberley and Warrenton, the 
town on the south bank of the Vaal, opposite Four- 
teen Streams, was very heavy, I learned ; so I decided 
to send my cart and horses on ahead light, while I 
proceeded myself by rail, carrying the heavier por- 
tion of my kit with me. So I started Lewis off that 



FITTING OUT FOR THE FRONT. 55 

afternoon, and next morning-, Friday, the 18tli of 
May, left myself by train. Four hours later I reached 
the little hamlet, and established myself at the War- 
ren Hotel, a humble roadside inn set among- a few 
poplars, in a neighborhood chiefly noted, I was told, 
for snakes. 

The Warren Hotel was popular with the officers in 
General Hunter's camp across the river, where the 
fare was strictly regulated by the resources of the 
army supply de^Dartment, and I spent twenty-four 
hours there in pleasant company waiting for my 
transport. I had left the raw type of officer behind 
me ; General Hunter preferred to be served by men 
of worth, and the subalterns whom I sat down with 
at the Warren Hotel were all the best of fellows. 

Lewis turned up early the next morning, driving 
four ponies instead of the two I had turned over to 
him at Kimberley, and with a tale of woe to tell 
in answer to my inquiries as to why he was late. 
The original team had given out, he explained, a 
short way from Kimberley — they were no good, any- 
how — and he had put back to obtain two more. 
These had been temporarily sup^olied by the auc- 
tioneer, the others to be returned when I was safely 
across the Vaal. The arrangement seemed the best 
that could be made, so I, perforce, approved it. 

A few hours later I rode to the river, and crossed 
over to where General Hunter's tents were gleaming. 



56 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

The Yaal is one of the few South African rivers that 
does not dry up in winter. I found the current 
strong there at Fourteen Streams, with three feet of 
water on the drift and a stony bottom that made it no 
easy matter to get across drj^-shod. My pony took 
it gallantly, however, worked his way forward among 
the other animals in the stream of traffic moving 
across, and in five minutes we were safely past the 
wagons struggling through, and found ourselves on 
the northern bank. I made my way to the press 
censor, was introduced by him to General Hunter, 
and after answering the searching but straightfor- 
ward questions he put to me, was duly granted 
authority to attach myself to his force. 

Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Hunter, when I 
was presented to him that day by Major Fasson, his 
Brigade -Major, was seated at a small table in the 
recesses of a commodious tent pitched in the centre 
of his camp, which occupied an extensive area on the 
high ground rising from the north bank of the Vaal 
river. As we halted at the entrance to his head- 
quarters, the General looked up from the mass of 
papers over which he had been bending, and fixed 
me with a keen glance, preliminary to questioning 
me as to my fitness for the duties to which I had 
been assigned. I have seldom seen a more hand- 
some man than he, or one more generously en- 
dowed with those physical characteristics which go 



FITTING OUT FOR THE FRONT. 57 

to make up one's heau ideal of tlie successful soldier 
and commander. Tall, and of splendid physique, 
streng-tli of cliaracter was stamped on every feature 
of liis striking face. It was a face tliat would attract 
attention anywhere, but it was most particularly in 
the searching glance of his clear, brown eye that one 
knew him for a man long trained in the habit of com- 
mand. He had but to ask a question to compel the 
frank and upright answer. But once satisfied that a 
man, whoever he was, was what he professed to be, 
he thereafter, as I can testify from my own experi- 
ence, treated him with all frankness and courtesy, 
and left no room for doubt that under all circum- 
stances he would meet with the consideration due 
from man to man. One had only to do his duty and 
bear himself manfully, and he would have no cause 
to complain of General Hunter. That much was 
stamped upon his face ; and all his actions were in 
keeping with the promise there TVT-itten. But with 
all that, nothing ever betrayed him into loss of self- 
control. He knew well how to keep his counsel ; and 
although throughout my subsequent service with him 
he never failed to give me full information on all sub- 
jects concerning which it was proper for the press to 
be instructed, he just as frankly refused to discuss 
matters which the proper conduct of the campaign 
required should not for the i^resent be known. And 
whether his answer was consent or refusal, one always 



58 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

left him satisfied that it was right. Such censorship 
as he exercised over our desj^atches was eminently 
fair, and there were no complaints from any of the 
war correspondents attached to his forces. General 
Hunter and his courteous Chief of Staff, Lieutenant- 
Colonel A. J. Murray, gave me, for one, every cause 
to appreciate as a privilege of the highest the op- 
portunity to witness those operations of the Tenth 
Division. 

Like most of the higher officers who have won dis- 
tinction in South Africa, General Hunter had seen 
service in Egypt, where he had first displayed the 
high qualities which later enabled him to render 
such able assistance to General White during the 
defence of Lady smith. Some time before I joined 
him at Fourteen Streams, he had been intrusted by 
Lord Roberts with the relief of Mafeking. Of how 
he sent Colonel Mahon forward to the brilliant 
achievement of that plan England at least does not 
need to be reminded. 

After foregathering with two other correspondents 
whom I found in General Hunter's camp, I recrossed 
the river to bring up my establishment. That after- 
noon my cart, now heavily laden with my mess sup- 
plies and other stores, was got safely across, and 
before sunset my little bivouac was ]Ditched near that 
of my fellow correspondents, and I settled down to 
life at the front. 



CHAPTEK YIII. 

The Eelief of YKYBURa. 

We remained in camp at Fourteen Streams for 
only two days more, awaiting news of tlie fate of 
Colonel Mahon's expedition for the relief of Mafe- 
king. On Sunday I sent back to Kimberley my two 
unserviceable liorses. On Monday the press censor 
gave us the glad news that Baden-Powell had been 
successfully relieved, a day ahead of the time set by 
Lord Roberts. The way was now cleared for General 
Hunter's advance northward and eastward into the 
Transvaal, to be ready, if necessary, to co-operate 
with Lord Roberts's main column in overcoming any 
Boer resistance to the advance on Johannesburg and 
Pretoria. The preparations for striking camp were 
at once begun, and on Tuesday we correspondents 
obtained permission to start on in advance of head- 
quarters, which were to move in a day or two for 
Yryburg. That morning we started on our lonely 
trek across the veldt, cheered by the expectation of 
soon seeing some fighting and of assisting in the 
taking of Pretoria. 

Our four hours' horseback ride that day to Border 
siding was through a country much more interesting 



60 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

than the level and not too fertile tracts of the Free 
State that we had preA'iously traversed. Seen across 
the Vaal river from Warrenton, Griqnaland looked 
for all the world like the richest woodland; and 
traveling through it we found that ax3X3earance to be 
due to closely set clumps of thornbushes, which often 
grew high enough to be called trees. Further down 
country nothing rose higher above the veldt than the 
omnipresent ant-hill, save an occasional clump of 
poplars marking some pool of water. Most notice- 
able of all that we now saw about us was the green 
in the landscaj)e. It was a cheering change, for the 
all-pervading khaki of the Free State and northern 
Cape Colony wearied the eye and the soul. In Gri- 
qualand one realized what results might be obtained 
if a colony of enterprising farmers would turn to, dig 
down the necessary twenty feet to the water which 
exists at that depth all over, or rather all under, that 
land, and freshen up the soil, which is as rich as any 
in most i3arts of the world, and richer far than tracts 
in Australia and in some parts of America now fertile 
were originally. But we speedily found that the 
Boer was content if he wrested a bare living out of 
the soil (and a bare living for him was bare indeed) ; 
his nearest neighbor was too far away to stir him into 
competition, and so a country with almost infinite 
resources and blessed with as fine a climate as there 
is anywhere, went begging for some nation of workers 



THE RELIEF OF VRYBURG. 61 

to redeem it. That appeared to be also the situation 
in the neighboring parts of the Transvaal, for it was 
only an imaginary line a hundred yards from where 
we pitched our bivouac that evening that separated 
it from British territory. From the top of a koj^je 
across the border, where Cai^tain Robertson of the 
Connaught Rangers, in command of the small supply 
depot there, had built a most businesslike little fort, 
I looked out that afternoon over thousands of acres 
of the richest pasture-land, green with verdure ; and 
though one could see sixty miles in that clear atmos- 
phere, a strong jDair of field-glasses failed to reveal 
a sign of human habitation. 

We started on from Border siding the next morn- 
ing, the 23rd, and after a halt of four hours at Phok- 
wani, to rest our horses, we left the line of the railway 
and started off across country towards Taungs. Our 
progress that afternoon was retarded by one of our 
ponies giving out, and darkness found us on the 
veldt, miles away, apparently, from anywhere. Fi- 
nally halting at about half -past six, we sought in 
vain for water for our horses, and in the end had to 
outspan and leave them thirsty until day should 
break. For ourselves we had enough in our water 
bottles, and made a good meal. Then we pitched our 
tent, and spent the night in entire comfort. 

We were up at dawn to find visitors in the form of 
two grizzled Kaffirs and three ebony children, all 



62 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

wrapiDed up in scanty karrosses and shivering in the 
morning chill, who had come down from a kraal which 
daylight revealed to us on rising ground half a mile 
away. The same distance to the west the gleam of 
running water, which had been hidden from us in the 
darkness, caught our eye, and we at once sent our 
boys off with the horses, which soon returned visibly 
refreshed. We managed to learn from our Kaffir 
friends that we were just beyond Banks Drift, on the 
right road to Taungs, and that the latter place was 
only a few miles away. 

Meanwhile our visitors, whose numbers kept in- 
creasing until there were ten or twelve men and 
children about us, eagerly helped us to build our 
fire, the prospect of which had proved the chief mag- 
net to draw them forth from their huts, and also drew 
water for us from the neighboring Harts. One can- 
not imagine a more picturesque group than these 
natives formed, in the wilderness where they were 
living just as they had done since the beginning, 
showing the traces of civilization only in their lack of 
weapons and in the cast-off white man's garments 
which some of them wore beneath their buckskin 
karrosses. The most interesting and oldest of the 
party we learned was the chief of the neighboring 
tribe and lord of the kraal on the hill. His name was 
Abarub, he told us, and we managed to hold quite a 
conversation with him with the aid of one of the 



THE RELIEF OF VRYBURa. 63 

youngsters, who could speak a few words of Eng-lisli 
and acted as interpreter. Abarub was a most genial 
old chap, though dignified withal, and I took photo- 
graphs of him and the rest, interestingly grouiDed, 
while Paxton made a sketch of him squatting on the 
ground and gazing toward his kraal. At first he 
refused to face the camera, of which he was plainly 
very much afraid; but Paxton's sketch pleased him 
immensely. We gave him presents of tobacco and 
jam-tins, which the youths in his train licked clean, 
and he acknowledged our beneficence with grave 
courtesy. We left them with mutual expressions of 
regret and pushed on towards Taungs. All about us 
were Kaffir huts — no white men appeared anywhere ; 
indeed, we had not seen one since leaving Phokwani. 
The undulating veldt, studded with mimosa bushes, 
might almost never have been trodden by white men, 
so few traces had they left behind as they passed by 
with their occasional bullock teams. The country 
was fertile enough, however, as the mealie fields and 
melon patches of the Kaffir testified. Abarub's peo- 
ple were evidently prosperous. 

We reached Taungs about noon. There we met 
Abarub's overlord. King Malala. He lunched with 
us in an officer's tent, and we all shook hands and 
exchanged greetings with most interesting ceremony. 
Shortly after we arrived. General Hunter's train 
steamed in from Fourteen Streams. Walker and I 



64 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

boarded it and entered Yryburg with him, leaving- 
onr two companions to bring on our carts by road. 

General Barton's brigade had reached this little 
town on the preceding Wednesday, to be enthusias- 
tically greeted by most of the fifteen hundred inhabi- 
tants, who for seven long and weary months had been 
cut off from railway and practically all other commu- 
nication with the rest of the world, and overrun with 
Boers. The traces of the enemy's presence were not 
difficult to see. They had stripped the town of about 
everything in the way of food and stock, and left be- 
hind filth and bad smells, in accordance with their 
simple and pastoral habits. It is easy to understand 
why a community should rejoice to be delivered from 
an invader w^ho locks horses up in dwelling-houses 
and leaves them there to die and rot. That was the 
discovery made in this neighborhood by one of Gen- 
eral Barton's officers. The labor of cleaning up Cape 
Colony after the Boers should have been driven out 
of it was evidently going to be one that Hercules 
himself would not have smiled at. 

And Vryburg was entitled to better treatment. It 
was a pleasant enough little place. Most of its one- 
story, rectangular houses were built along one broad 
street, close upon two miles long, and lined for most 
of the way with lofty willows and poplars. We saw 
no gardens, but there were many open lots on which 
the veldt grass and scrub grew luxuriantly. Above 



THE RELIEF OF VRYBURG. 65 

all, O'Reilly's Spruit and innumerable wells furnished 
an ample supply of the best water, which even the 
Boers had not been able to contaminate. 

The townspeople were English and Dutch, mixed 
in fairly equal proportions. It had been somewhat 
of a rebel stronghold, but most of the earnest Boer 
sympathizers had by this time cleared out. One 
remained, however, to run the Yryburg hotel, seeing 
his chance to make much money out of the British, 
and willing' to take the risk of being sent to Kimberley 
to be tried for treason. He waited upon us at meals, 
dressed in Boer fashion — dirty trousers and waist- 
coat, dirty shirt minus a collar, and a scraggy beard. 
His food was good, however, and appetizing if one 
did not penetrate into the fastnesses of the grimy 
kitchen, presided over by one lone Kaffir cook. How 
she and he together managed to provide three meals 
a day for forty hungry officers remained an unsolv- 
able mystery to all of us. 

General Barton's brigade had marched into Yry- 
burg from Christiana after having done one hundred 
and twenty miles in seven marching days, and had 
made a dramatic entry in three columns amid the 
plaudits of the long-suffering inhabitants, w^ho, 
though not so badly off as the people of Mafeking, 
had plenty of troubles of their own. At almost the 
same moment the armored train had steamed up to 
the station over the newly repaired line, to be greeted 

5 



66 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

with touching- fervor as the first train seen for seven 
months. It was on the next day, the Queen's birth- 
day, that General Hunter came in with his headquar- 
ters from Fourteen Streams. Her Majesty's birthday 
was celebrated in beautiful weather, with a parade of 
the troops, some five thousand in all, and emphatic ex- 
pressions of loyalty were drawn from faithful Tommy 
Atkins by an extra issue of rum. 

General Hunter and his officers settled down in 
Yryburg, entirely content with the success of his re- 
cent operations. Their chief result, of course, had 
been the relief of Mafeking-, made possible by the de- 
cisive battle of Rooidam on May 5th, which split up 
the Boers who had prepared to oppose the advance 
of the flying column sent out by General Hunter, and 
left them with a force no larger than Colonel Mahon 
could deal with, as he did in the fight of May 13th, 
just beyond Koodoosrand. The repairing of the rail- 
way as far as Yryburg was also a satisfactory and im- 
portant event : satisfactory, because the Boers had 
been boasting that the town would never see an Eng- 
lish train again ; and important, because the relief of 
Maf eking would not be complete until General Hun- 
ter's force had repaired the road up to the gates of 
Baden-Powell's stronghold. And so it was that not 
only had the gallant colonel been gazetted a Major- 
General, but General Barton, as well, had received the 
congratulations of the High Commissioner, Sir Alfred 



THE RELIEF OF VRYBURG. 67 

Milner, on bring-ing Yryburg- back under tlie flag on 
Her Majesty's birthday. 

The military operations of the past few weeks had 
pretty well rid this part of the country of the enemy, 
and scouts and natives reported only a few scattered 
parties in the neighborhood. The main body that had 
been besieging Mafeking, and most of the rebels, had 
trekked east into the Transvaal. Whether they would 
oppose the invasion at the border or retire upon Jo- 
hannesburg and Pretoria for a final stand, was at that 
time entirely problematical. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

Invading the Teansyaal. 

General Hunter's forces rested for a week at Yry- 
bnro-, accumulating supplies and completing prepara- 
tions for the march into the Transyaal which we soon 
learned was about to begin. Our General was to 
move across from the west, to clear and pacify the 
country eastward and northward up to Lord Roberts's 
line of march, then stretching northward from the 
Yaal towards Johannesburg. It was expected that 
the Boers recently driven from the neighborhood of 
Mafeking would be encountered somewhere ; and 
General Hunter's orders were to scatter them if he 
could, and in any event to occupy the principal towns 
and villages of the western Transvaal and thus pre- 
vent their use as bases by the enemy. As it turned 
out, however, we met with no opposition. The Boers 
were ah^eady disorganized ; they had ah^eady aban- 
doned their early policy of resisting the columns now^ 
converging from all sides upon Pretoria, and had in- 
augurated the tactics of harassing the British flanks 
and rear which Christian de Wet Avas later to pursue 
with such brilliant success. Thus it was that from Yry- 
burg to Kruegersdorp, the last town occupied by Gen- 
eral Hunter before joining the forces to the eastward 



INVADING THE TRANSVAAL. 69 

of Joliannesburg-, not a shot was fired ; and at Krue- 
g-ersdorp itself, where the Boers made their only pre- 
tence of resistance, the British suffered but one 
casualty, a trooper of the Imperial Light Horse who 
fell a victim to a sniper's bullet. Several commandoes 
were roaming over the country we passed through, 
but they never waited to try conclusions with us ; and 
General Hunter's march, like that of Lord Roberts 
from Bloemfontein up, was little more than a peaceful 
pilgrimage. 

A few days before the movement from Yryburg be- 
gan, Lieutenant-Colonel Murray, Chief of Staff, with 
the courtesy which he always extended to us of the 
press, showed us the itinerary decided upon. The 
force was to move by easy stages upon Lichtenburg, 
whence the further advance was to be governed by 
circumstances. The country lying between was bare 
and arid for the most part, with not enough water to 
supi^ort the whole force moving together, and so the 
division was split up into seven detachments, which 
were to follow one another a days march apart. 

The first stage of our journey was made by rail to 
Doornbult, then the farthest point on the line to 
Mafeking to which the Royal Engineers had carried 
their repairs. The Boers, retreating before each ad- 
vancing column, expended much energy and dyna- 
mite in blowing up culverts and bridges, and in gen- 
erally wrecking the railway and such rolling stock as 



70 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

they could not take with them ; but they succeeded 
in but slightly delaying the tightening of the great 
cordon closing in about doomed Pretoria. Doorn- 
bult was a typical South African railway siding. It 
boasted in the way of buildings two shanties rudely 
built of galvanized iron and a few mean Kaffir huts. 
A mile off the line was a farm which had been occu- 
pied by a prosperous English farmer. Natives had 
very thoroughly looted it, however, and we found the 
sole possessors to be half a dozen ostriches and a few 
of the original staff of native servants. 

The scene that evening when we pitched our tent 
would have been desolate indeed but for the tents 
and wagons of the troops; The country thereabouts 
was little more than a level plain, out of which 
Leeuw Kop, two miles off to the east, rose as the only 
eminence. The veldt was parched and dry. and cov- 
ered with an acrid dust which every breath of wind 
blew into every crevice of one's kit and clothes. 
Clumps of thorn-bushes and occasional stunted trees 
of the beech variety alone served to vary the mo- 
notony of the khaki-colored veldt, save where away 
to the west a small group of poplars and willow^s 
marked the presence of water, very muddy, but good 
enough for the animals. Of water fit for man there 
was none nearer than three miles, and in fact all along 
the first half of the route from Yryburg to Lichten- 
burg that precious fluid was extremely scarce. Such 



INVADING THE TRANSVAAL. 71 

as we found was by no means good, being- generally 
stagnant and always mnddy. Tommy Atkins when 
thirsty was not at all fastidious, however, and swal- 
lowed it eagerly, thus furnishing one simple enough 
explanation of the breaking out of typhoid fever 
wherever troops had camped for any length of time. 
The wiser of us ran no such risks, and boiled our 
water in the evening. After standing all night it was 
ice cold in the morning, and we were thus able to 
carry with us for the next day's supply water as 
pure as one could ask for. Everywhere underneath 
the surface in that country water was xolentiful enough, 
as the vegetation, such as it was, testified ; but since 
the white man first penetrated into the Dark Conti- 
nent no one seemed to have found it worth while, 
except at spots very few and far between, to tap the 
underground su^Dply. The way in which the Boer re- 
lied upon the Lord to satisfy his wants would have 
been touching if it did not bespeak such indolence 
and improvidence. He met with his reproof, how- 
ever, for nothing could have been more plain than 
the fact that until he helped himself he would con- 
tinue without any assistance from on high to dwell in 
the squalor and general wretchedness to which the 
average Boer, the stupid Kaffir, and the hopeless 
Hottentot seemed equally indifferent. 

Tommy Atkins, however, went marching on through 
that land of unfulfilled promise with a never faltering 



72 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

cheerfulness, forg-etting all the hardships of the day 
as soon as his tent was pitched at evening and he 
heard the crackling of the fire which his comrade was 
building. His khaki uniform had long since lost every 
trace of neatness ; his shoes were more than worn, and 
he was grimy and generally unkemx3t from head to 
foot ; but he used to wake us up with a song as he went 
by our tent in the morning on his way for water or 
forage. 

But then. Lord Roberts himself had no finer or fitter 
troops in his column than those stalwart troopers and 
fusiliers of General Hunter's division. The Royal 
Fusiliers, the Scots, Irish, and Welsh Fusiliers, the 
First Connaught Rangers, the Dublin Fusiliers, the 
crack Royal Horse Artillery, the Royal Field Artil- 
lery, and the Scottish companies of the dashing, reck- 
less Imperial Yeomanry, were all represented in Gen- 
eral Hunter's command, and formed his main force. 
On their colors were the names of Dundee, Elands- 
laagte, Nicholson's Nek, Ladysmith, Colenso — the last 
the spot where the troops in open order advanced for 
miles across an absolutely open plain under fire from 
an enemy almost impregnably intrenched on hills be- 
fore them ; they helped to storm and carry Spion Kop, 
and were all through the terrible fourteen days and 
nights with BuUer on the Tuegela, before they were 
formed into the Tenth Division and placed under Gen- 
eral Hunter's command after Ladysmith was relieved. 



INVADING THE TRANSVAAL. 73 

Time and again during that fierce and bloody Natal 
campaign they had driven the Boers out of x^ositions 
that no one would have been so rash as to presume 
could be taken before these men showed the way into 
them and marked their path through the trenches 
with their dead. The ordeal had made men of them, 
many of whom were little more than boys when they 
had come across eight months before, and it was easy 
to see that it would go hard with the Boers if the lat- 
ter tried to check them between there and Pretoria. 
Stalwart, bronzed veterans they were now, with a 
steady look in their eyes that was good to see if you 
were of their race and of their friends. Ten wars 
could not have tried them and proved them as this 
one had done, but they made no boasts. They sim- 
ply walked straight and proudly, and held their heads 
up, looking every inch the men of mettle who could 
carve out a world-wide empire and then govern it 
wisely and well for the good of all. 

Those days of early stress were past now, however, 
and in that camp at Doornbult all was peaceful. The 
scene as night fell that evening was typical of many 
another evening that followed. Half an hour after the 
sun went down there was only a band of deep yellow 
along the western horizon, shading off through deli- 
cate greens into the deepening azure of the rapidly 
darkening sky. Group by group the brighter and 
then the fainter stars came trooping out. Barely visi- 



74 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

ble, the slender crescent of the new moon was sink- 
ing down the pathway marked by the sun's last ray. 
Under the stars a few camp fires beg-an to gleam 
brightly. From the direction of the little railway 
platform, where a train from Yryburg had just drawn 
up, now and again a squad of soldiers, treading al- 
most noiselessly^ over the soft veldt, slipx)ed into the 
range of vision, passed by, and disappeared again into 
the gathering darkness. Sounds came faintly from 
the distance, where the last few boxes of supplies 
were being loaded into the wagons in readiness for 
the start at dawn, the softened cries of the Kaffirs 
mingling with the sounds of jostling boxes. From 
nearer at hand one heard the sizzling of a pot around 
which a group of black East Indian servants, with 
turbans on their heads, were muttering, cooking the 
evening meal for the officers' mess. Little by little 
these noises grew fewer, one heard a laugh or a 
snatch of song, and then the overwhelming stillness 
of the veldt settled down over all things. The wind, 
which had blown all day a refreshing breeze from the 
west, shifted into the east and took on the biting chill 
which would freeze the marrow in one's bones if one 
did not fortify himself with sweaters and greatcoats. 
Finally the sweetest sound of all, the bugle sounding 
" last post," rang through the camp, and as the last 
lingering notes died away the silence and the dark- 
ness became alike impenetrable. 



CHAPTEK X. 

Incidents of the March. 

"We left Doornbult on tlie 31st of May with No. 5 
detachment, and came along- by easy stages, keeping 
between the two bodies of troops. By that arrange- 
ment we managed to travel most comfortably, and 
enjoyed to the full visits to Boer farms along and just 
off the line of march. Being by ourselves, we were 
able at many places to purchase eggs, milk, and such 
other delicacies as had become procurable over night, 
and had many interesting adventures. Throughout 
our march, after crossing the border at Maribogo Pan, 
we were face to face with some of the more distress- 
ing realities of war. Most of the farmhouses which 
we passed eii route we found tenanted only by women 
and children ; and they all, in Dutch and broken 
English, had woeful tales to tell of how their stock 
had been taken by the English or the Kaffirs, leaving 
them often with little or no meat themselves and no 
milk for the babies. General Hunter had strictly 
followed the policy of the English throughout this 
war, sternly prohibiting all looting by the troops, pay- 
ing for all supplies taken for military purposes, and 
leaving behind enough for the inhabitants to get 
along with. The natives, however, finding their day 



76 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

of reckoning at last at hand, were taking every oppor- 
tunity to revenge themselves for years of Boer oi)i)res- 
sion. Many unprotected farms had been visited by ma- 
rauding bands, and stock driven off when the jDlaces 
were not looted of everything. As is usually the 
case, the innocent had to bear their share of the suf- 
fering. In some cases Boer women had suffered the 
worst atrocities at the hands of the blacks. One 
household was saved in the nick of time a few days 
before we arrived by a squad from the advance guard 
of General Hunter's division. Four natives were 
preparing to torture the women when the corporal in 
charge of the squad a^Dpeared at the door and ordered 
them to surrender. The negroes submitted at once ; 
but on getting outside the house and seeing that 
there were only five soldiers against them, they made 
a dash back again for their arms and opened fire. 
The result was disastrous for them, however, for the 
first volley from the corporal's guard disposed of 
them all. Another detachment of troops had rounded 
up a band of thirty or more looters, and had had to 
shoot several of them before getting the others under. 
Some Boers furnished a little excitement for some 
of the detachments. As a rule, those living in the 
neighborhood through which the columns advanced 
came in and surrendered their arms. They had 
slipped back to their farms from commando, after 
seeing that the tide had turned against them, and. 



INCIDENTS OF THE MABCH. 77 

sick of fig-hting", were glad enough to have done with 
it for the time being. These, unless something worse 
than fighting against England was known about them, 
were, in accordance with Lord Roberts's magnani- 
mous policy, allowed to go free upon swearing to re- 
main neutral and not to leave their farms. When the 
Yeomanry reached Barber's Pan, however, they heard 
that a band of the enemy had been in the neighbor- 
hood the day before, evidently with no intention of 
submitting ; and a midnight raid was made on two 
suspected farmhouses. The men were too late, how- 
ever, being in time only to see thirty or more Boers, 
mounted and armed, making off in the distance. 
They had presumably been visiting the women to 
obtain such food as the latter had been able to con- 
ceal. 

At a farm not far from Biesjesvallei, near where the 
troops had had their brush with the Kaffirs, one of 
my companions (Mr. Paxton, the London Sphere 
artist) and myself got three prisoners of our own. 
We were a few miles in advance of the Fifth Detach- 
ment at the time, and had just outspanned for lunch 
under the shade of a small clump of trees. We two, 
with my servant Lewis, were standing beside a small 
well where we had overseen the watering of our 
horses, when Paxton called my attention to a group 
of horsemen approaching from the direction of Pot- 
chefstroom, which was well off the line of march, and 



78 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

where we knew tliat none of our troops had been. 
Through our glasses we made them out to be three 
armed men, who at that distance seemed to be Kaf- 
firs. A moment later, however, we saw that thej' 
were Boers. One of them was holding aloft a white 
handkerchief, tied to the end of his rifle. Another, 
however, had his rifle slimg across his knees ; and, 
recalling former incidents of Boer treacheiy, we held 
oiu'selves very much on the aleii:. I concluded at 
once fi'om the white flag that they had mistaken us, 
in our khaki and helmets, for British officers, and had 
come to surrender to us. To keep them from finding 
out theii' mistake was the vital point ; we coidd not 
afford to have them learn that we were wai' corre- 
spondents, or the siuTendering would in all proba- 
bility have to be done by us. I alone was anned, and 
only with a revolver. So we decided to bluff it out. 
A glance back at oiu' little cavalcade under the trees 
showed that it looked formidable enough, and I relied 
upon the passage of the detachment ahead of us the 
day before and upon the presence of the next one a 
few miles behind us to convince the Boers that we 
had plenty of force at oui' supi^ort. It all worked 
like a charm. As the Boers drew near we stej^ped 
boldly towards them. They came to within twenty 
paces of us, and then halted. The man with the 
white flag held up his other hand, and all three lifted 
their hats. I beckoned them forward, and when they 



INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH. 79 

reached us, said to tliem that I supposed they had 
come to g-ive up their arms. " Yes," they all replied 
with alacrity. We were delighted to hear it, and 
w^e gave them no chauce to change their minds. 
So I directed Lewis, who, of course, spoke Dutch 
fluently, to tell them that they must give up their guns 
at once and then wait until headquarters came up, 
when we would turn them over to the commanding 
officer. They thereupon handed us their rifles and 
disgorged about one hundred rounds of ammunition, 
which we sent back to our carts. With their arms in 
our possession, we both breathed easier, and returned 
ourselves to the trees to eat our lunch and wait for 
the column to catch us up, leaving our three prizes 
lying on the veldt beside their ponies to await our 
pleasure. 

We waited for an hour or so, and still the column 
did not come. We began to get restless, and so did 
the Boers. Finally, two of them climbed up on the 
wall of a ruined outhouse, scanned the country in our 
rear, and then came up to us to say that the troops 
had halted. That meant that w^e should have to take 
them back to camp ourselves ; so we ordered them to 
saddle up, and, mounting our own horses and taking 
their guns and ammunition, we marched our prison- 
ers back. The detachment had halted half a mile be- 
hind us. We reached the camp without incident, the 
Boers being evidently only too anxious to have the 



80 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

business over and to learn their fate. Riding- up to 
headquarters, we turned them over to the command- 
ing officer, Major Moore of the Irish Fusiliers, in com- 
mand of the detachment. He received them with 
thanks, took over their arms and horses, and then 
examined them through an interpreter. They had 
slipped away from the commando a month ago at 
Fourteen Streams, they said, and had since been liv- 
ing on their farms. Major Moore had them swear to 
be good — to remain neutral and not leave their farms ; 
and then, telling them that he hoped they would agree 
with him to let bygones be bygones and live at peace, 
set them free. The Boers, greatly relieved, shook 
hands all around, and an incident extremely interest- 
ing to us was closed. We put in a request for the two 
rifles surrendered to us, and later received them as 
souvenirs. 

Two of these men were lithe, sinewy young fel- 
lows, with swarthy faces ; and all three bore them- 
selves manfully and like worthy foemen. The same 
cannot be said, however, of all we met. At several 
farms, men who had similarly been released on parole 
showed a desire to propitiate us which did not pre- 
possess us in their favor. We liked the bearing of 
the women better ; they showed more pride, and de- 
meaned themselves much more as man to man. 

The rest of our journey to Lichtenburg we accom- 
plished without mishap, having indeed a very pleas- 



INCIDENTS OF THE MAECH. 81 

ant time of it, thanks to luck in finding ideal camping 
places. Our last niglit on the road we spent on a de- 
serted farm which, though it had been looted by Kaf- 
firs, still contained many evidences of a prosperous 
past. There were over half a dozen buildings in all, 
comprising stables and granaries, besides the dwell- 
ing-houses for family and servants. Water was there 
in abundance, a stream of rare clearness running 
through it. A dam served to provide a large marshy 
pool, which was choked with tall reeds and swarming 
with frogs and wild fowl, and there was nearby an 
acre of tall trees of many varieties, their leaves all 
glowing with the tints of autumn. There also we 
found a heap of firewood, for which we were accus- 
tomed to rely upon fence poles and broken boxes 
carried with us, and that evening we ate our dinner 
before a roaring camp fire which warmed the very 
cockles of our hearts and made us want to halt there 
for a week. But on we had to go next morning, the 
column overtaking us before we had finished catch- 
ing all of the stray hens that had been left behind or 
salting away forage that we found in one of the store- 
houses. 

At another farmhouse where we camped for the 
night, we found about a dozen women and children all 
by themselves, and among them as fair a lass as one 
could ask to see. Buxom she was, and rosy withal, 
wherein she differed from all other women we had so 

6 



82 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

far seen in South Africa. Quite a rivalry, of a sort 
strange to us for many weeks, sprang up between us 
after we had pitched our camp that evening ; and 
each caught the others at one time or another shav- 
ing and washing with unwonted care, and generally 
polishing ourselves off. The maid was rather haughty, 
not to say sniffy, at first ; but she thawed out in the 
evening, and even sang us a Dutch song in a voice 
like a calliope. Next morning we secured eggs from 
them, and also consummated an extremely advan- 
tageous horse deal. At the time of parting, however, 
Martha (that was the fair one's name) had frozen up 
again, and made but a most ungracious response to 
our farewell salutations. But she did not appear so 
fair by the light of morning, and perhaps she knew 
it. The little children were decent enough looking 
youngsters, fair-haired, with blue eyes and fat cheeks, 
but verj' dii'ty. Yerily, dii't is one of the crimes of that 
country. Nobody who lives there seems to care to be 
clean. As a rule the Boers don't even wash the out- 
side of the cup and i^latter. The gii'ls are plump 
enough as girls, but as they grow older they seem 
fii'st to grow very fat and then very thin. They lack 
the crowning glory of theii' sex in having but sparse 
locks. The men seem to have created a corner in 
hair to furnish forth their faces. There was certainly 
no lack of beards in the Transvaal, which, falling away 



INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH. 83 

from underneath the inevitable slouch hat, made the 
Boers all look singularly alike. 

The country we marched through was most dreary. 
We had hardly crossed the border when the oc- 
casional clumps of bush that we had welcomed for 
their green foliage vanished ; and thereafter we never 
saw a tree save at intervals of many miles, where 
there happened to be surface water. During our first 
few days in the Transvaal, we frequently found our- 
selves in the center of a plain as bare as the sea, 
without a green spot anywhere to relieve the deso- 
late, dry surface of the sun-parched veldt. One can- 
not imagine what a task it is to march through such 
a country. Poor Tommy Atkins on foot found it 
most depressing. As we drew near Lichtenburg, 
however, farms grew more numerous, and most of 
them could boast of at least a few tall trees, which 
furnished us the rare treat of shade for each of our 
last few midday meals. The little town itself, which 
we entered on the morning of the 5th of June, gave 
one the impression of being set down in a forest. As 
^s^e aj^proached it we saw nothing but trees, the build- 
ings being mostly one-storied and never rising above 
the encompassing foliage. Water ran in ditches on 
either side of the streets, and the latter, lined with 
interlocking trees, seemed when one was in them like 
wooded lanes. The only open space was the central 
square lined with the government buildings, all in 



84 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

stone, and boasting a few patches of green grass. 
Over this as we came in floated the Union Jack, at 
the head of a tall flag-staff before the Landrost's 
offices; and there also was General Hunter's red 
pennant waving in front of his headquarters. 

At Lichtenburg we heard of the fall of Pretoria. 
That news dashed our hopes of assisting at that dra- 
matic event of the war, and seemed to indicate that 
Lord Roberts's task was over. That it was not, how- 
ever, was speedily made plain. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

Outwitting De Wet at Potchefstroom. 

General Hunter's division rested at Lichtenbnrg 
until the 9tli of June, completing the transfer of au- 
thority from Boer to Briton, and seeking, not with- 
out success, for hidden arms and ammunition. Then 
the rear guard was off again, following up head- 
quarters to Yentersdorp, a two days' march away. 
We correspondents accompanied General Mahon, 
who, after relieving Maf eking, had rejoined the force, 
and was now in command of the cavalry brigade. 

The burghers of Yentersdorp at first made a show 
of resisting British occupation. There was some 
criticism in General Mahon's camp of the way in 
which the demand for surrender was made. Three 
officers, including Colonel Edwards, of the Imperial 
Light Horse, and Major Eeade, General Hunter's 
intelligence officer, accompanied by half a dozen 
men, went on in advance of General Mahon's force, 
which formed the vanguard of the division, and this 
small party of half a score entered the town under a 
flag of truce. Once inside, they published Lord 
Roberts's proclamation calling- upon the burghers 
to surrender their arms and promising them in that 



86 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

event immunity from disturbance on their farms. 
Then Colonel Edwards communicated to the town 
officials General Hunter's demand for the submis- 
sion of Yentersdorp. The reply of the burghers was 
that there was a Boer commando in laager a few 
miles out of town, and that they saw no reason why 
this small advance party should not be made pris- 
oners. Upon this Colonel Edwards and his force 
took possession of the town hall, barricaded it, and 
announced that General Mahon would arrive early 
the next day, and that if he found that his represent- 
atives had suffered any injury, Yentersdorp would 
be burned. This boldness gave the burghers pause ; 
and they finally announced that they would wait 
to see if General Mahon did turn up. If he didn't, 
they would make Colonel Edwards's party prison- 
ers. 

As a matter of fact. General Mahon was not due 
until late the following evening. He had halted that 
evening about twenty miles out of Lichtenburg, in- 
tending to push on next morning to within striking 
distance of Yentersdorp. And so on the evening 
when Colonel Edwards was setting sentries behind 
his barricades in the town hall. General Mahon's 
force was resting peacefully on a little farm, with no 
intention of moving before seven o'clock on the fol- 
lowing morning. But Colonel Edwards succeeded 
in getting a message back to Lichtenburg describing 



OUTWITTING DE WET AT POTCHEFSTROOM. 87 

his plight, and requesting that General Mahon be 
hurried forward. General Hunter at once sent out a 
despatch rider with orders to that effect, and these 
were delivered to General Mahon by midnight. He 
struck camp at three in the morning, and reached 
Yentersdorp by one o'clock that afternoon, in time 
to extricate Colonel Edwards's party. Thereafter 
there was no further show of resistance from the 
burghers, who flocked to the town hall and surren- 
dered their Mausers and well-stocked bandoliers. 

We rested at Yentersdorp for only twenty-four 
hours. Within that time information was received 
to the effect that De Wet with a strong force was 
marching on Pot chef stroom, forty miles away, with 
the intention of holding it against us ; and General 
Mahon determined to get there first. Orders to 
march were issued at once ; and at four o'clock on 
Sunday afternoon he, with four Scottish companies 
of the Imperial Yeomanry and eight guns, left the 
town. We marched all night, halting only twice, for 
four hours in all ; and, stealing steadily and silently 
along in the moonlight, by dawn had got to within a 
few miles of Potchefstroom, on the edge of the kopjes 
surrounding. The march by night had been accom- 
plished without a hitch, and with the loss of only one 
man, who was temporarily disabled by a fall from his 
horse. The work told on the animals ; but they all 
ended the march in fairly fit condition. 



88 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

The moon set half an hour before dawn, and as we 
were now close to the position which the enemy 
would naturally select if he intended to oppose us, 
General Mahon halted, posted his force in readiness 
to attack from half a dozen points at once, and waited 
for the light. When it came it failed, however, to re- 
veal any signs that we were expected ; and the col- 
umn took up its advance again, the General dismount- 
ing and leading the way, slightly in the rear of his 
advance iDatrols. With flanks and fi'ont carefully 
screened by the cavalry, we moved around toward 
the north to cross the railway and enter by the north- 
east, thus securing the railway line to Johannesburg 
and preventing the escape of a possible force in that 
direction. Feeling its way carefully along through the 
bitter cold of the morning, the column crept on past 
stony kopjes which would have furnished excellent 
positions for even a small force seeking to oppose 
our advance, and proceeded towards the town, which 
was still out of sight behind the crests of the undu- 
lating country in our front. We were all very much 
on the alert, half expecting at any moment to see 
jets of flame shoot out from the stony crests on either 
side, and to hear the whistling of passing bullets. 
But such expectations were not realized. Soon we 
were on the outskirts of the town, with scattered 
farmhouses and Kaffir kraals coming into view, to 
the doors of which came surprised and sleepy women 



OUTWITTING DE WET AT POTCHEFSTROOM. 89 

and children and old men, to rub tlieir eyes and stare 
at us. Some of us drew up at tlieir humble thresh- 
olds, and they bestirred themselves to get us hot 
coffee, and bread, and cheese, which we found most 
refreshing after our long march through the cold. 
There was no suggestion of hostility in the attitude 
of these people, who would not even accept payment 
for what they had given us ; but then they told us 
that the town was not held by the enemy, which un- 
doubtedly made a difference. 

The column soon passed the last ko^DJe, and on our 
surmoimting the next rise the town lay spread out be- 
fore us, a couple of miles away, at the end of a broad 
highway leading down over a gently-sloping plain. 
Prom here we caught sight of iron rails again, for the 
first time since leaving Doornbult. There was an en- 
gine off to our right, a mile and a half out of town, 
evidently ready for a dash toward Johannesburg ; 
but General Mahon detached a score of troopers and 
sent them galloping across the plain to capture it, 
and the engine driver promptly obeyed the order to 
proceed back to the station. 

All further doubt as to the absence of any hostile 
force was now removed ; and at ten o'clock that morn- 
ing we entered the town. Marching up the long 
street toward the central square, the troops were re- 
ceived with enthusiastic cheers, and, although many 
were unmistakably English, we had our doubts as to 



90 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

tlie sincerity of some of tliem. There was no sign of 
the Tierkleiu' ; the Union Jack was fljong fi'om every 
flag-pole, and little giiis and colored housemaids 
were wa^-ing it from windows and doorways, while 
the crowds who lined the streets shook in oni' faces 
ribbons of red, white, and blue. One might have 
thought it theii' day of deliverance fi'om hoiTors and 
terrors unnamable. Later, however, other sentiments 
found expression. One old farmer wept as he suiTen- 
dered his rifle to an inexorable Lieutenant of Yeo- 
manry, who, with a squad of troopers, paid a dom- 
iciliaiy visit to his fai'm ; and the wife of the local 
printer, left behind when her husband went away on 
commando, amid tears of rage called down cui'ses 
fi"om heaven upon the heads of the English for con- 
fiscating his property. Others of the inhabitants, 
who were many of them sturdy, and by no means of 
the abject type with which we had become familiar in 
previously occupied Boer towns, stated veiy fi'ankly 
that they were sorry that we were winning, and that 
they still hoped we might be overcome. One such was 
the barkeej)er and general utility man at the Royal 
Hotel. He was a tall, clean-looking Dane, born there, 
who had fought at Magersfontein. He was most re- 
spectfrd in his manner toward the invaders, and served 
us with apparent good-will as well as despatch; but he 
preserved a grave demeanor, and told us, when one of 
us observed that the Boers would be much better off 



OUTWITTING DE WET AT POTCHEFSTROOM. 91 

■ander Englisli rule, that that might be so, but that 
one could not help sympathizing with one's country. 
To which creditable sentiment we all agreed. An- 
other burgher plucked me by the sleeve the first 
evening of our arrival, and held forth for a quarter 
of an hour about his sentiments and of his loathing 
for those of his fellow townsmen who, though like 
him, burghers born and bred, made haste to don hat- 
bands or rosettes of red, white, and blue, cried them- 
selves hoarse cheering the troops, and in sundry 
other " slim " ways pretended to be glad that we had 
come. 

Peaceful Potchefstroom we found to be a pleasant 
enough spot, that would have been a home to be 
proud of as well as fond of if inhabited by anybody 
but Boers. It was ideally situated in a smiling val- 
ley, watered by a boisterous stream both wide and 
deep. The houses, nearly all homely, one-story, 
white-walled structures, with here and there the 
ubiquitous corrugated galvanized iron shanty, were 
set wide apart along broad and shaded streets, with 
rills of clear water running past on either side. It 
was pleasant to walk through them in the short 
twilight hours, or at any time when the omnipresent 
and all-pervading dust was not flying. The town 
boasted several hotels to its scattered population of 
four thousand, and the town hall made some success- 
ful pretense at being imposing. Most of the build- 



92 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

ings, as ali'eady stated, were of tlie familiar South 
African pattern ; but a few of the well-to-do inhabi- 
tants had built themselves attractive little cottages 
of the Queen Anne style of architecture. Some had 
also gone in for gardens aud hedges, looking over 
which one g^ot glimpses of cool, vine-shi'ouded ve- 
randas, set back from the streets beyond closely- 
growing trees and shrubs, comprising such varieties 
as the callous cactus, the statel}" blue gum, the tall 
pine, and graceful willows and birches without num- 
ber. 

But there was the usual spirit of languor and dis- 
use brooding over everything. The houses were 
more than a neighborly distance apart, every family 
seeming to want to huddle away by itself. One re- 
sult was that it took ten miles of outposts to secure 
our Knes, so much more space than was necessary did 
the town take up. And nobody seemed to have any- 
thing to do. The men, in their soiled, thi^eadbare, 
nondescript garments, crowned with the inevitable 
formless felt hats, the women, in their sun-bonnets 
and ill-fitting frocks, were . forever slouching along- 
the streets, or standing in silent, stolid-looking- groups 
on the corners or in the open spaces, or sitting- on 
the dust}^ stoeps. The men were always smoking an 
evil-smelling brand of native tobacco ; and every fifth 
woman held a baby in her arms, or had a big-eyed, 
dirty-faced child clinging to her skirts. 



OUTWITTING DE WET AT POTCHEFSTROOM. 93 

At Potchefstroom advantage was taken by the 
Royal Scots Fusiliers of the opportunity to raise 
again, over the ruins of a small and long-abandoned 
fort, a famous flag that was buried at Pretoria on the 
restoration of independence to the Transvaal in 1881. 
It was the Union Jack carried by the 94th Regi- 
ment, which was almost annihilated while going to 
strengthen the garrison at Pretoria. The battalion 
of the Scots Fusiliers which formed part of General 
Hunter's force, attended by four pipers, assembled 
in the little enclosure, and to a crowd of some hun- 
dred of the inhabitants of Potchefstroom, Colonel 
Carr, their commanding oflicer, recited the history 
of the flag. Then the time-stained emblem was 
run up the flag-pole, and the troops presented arms. 
Tommy gave three cheers for the Queen, the crowd 
gave three more for the Scots Fusiliers, a guard 
was placed at the foot of the pole, and the ceremony 
was over. 

With the constant augmentation of the force at 
Potchefstroom, as the remainder of General Hunter's 
division came marching in, there came the usual dim- 
inution in supplies ; and very soon we had to cease 
regaling ourselves with eggs and fresh butter and 
vegetables and beer, and returned to bully beef and 
biscuits and "sparklets." At first, however, it was 
possible to be very comfortable ; and our only woes 
were due to the monopoly of the single telegraph by 



94 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Lord Roberts, whose lines of comnmnication through 
Kroonstad had been cut by the active De Wet. But 
everybody was cheerful ; and if you had looked in of 
an evening upon the officers, from the General and 
his staff down, seated at dinner in the great hall of 
the Royal Hotel, and listened to the pleasant clatter 
of knives and forks and to the jovial conversation, 
you would have thought they hadn't, any of them, a 
care in the world. 

After a two weeks' stay at Potchefstroom, while 
General Hunter's scouts and patrols scoured the 
country in search of flying bands of the enemy, and 
his provost marshal at the town hall received sur- 
rendered Mausers and commandeered horses, the 
force moved out again for the last stage of the ad- 
vance to Johannesburg. We left with a flavor of un- 
certainty and a scent of a possible fight in the air, 
which furnished a welcome relief to the monotony of 
our previous six weeks of marching and pacifica- 
tion, of peaceful sitting down in unresisting toTSTis, 
receiving the Mausers of submissive burghers, and 
appraising commandeered horses with weak knees 
and sore backs. But again we were disappointed in 
our expectations of seeing some more exciting ser- 
vice. We made our way with little incident through 
Welverdient, Doornkop (the scene of Doctor Jame- 
son's troubles at the time of his blundering raid), 
and Kruegersdorp, and in the last week of June Gen- 



OUTWITTING DE WET AT POTCHEFSTROOM. 95 

eral Hunter marched his division, still ten thousand 
strong, through the suburbs of Johannesburg, and 
took up his position on the railway to the eastward 
of that city, in readiness to assist in the operations, 
which Lord Roberts was already preparing for, to 
the northward and eastward of Pretoria. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Seeking Loed Methuen. 

Witli tlie successful completion of General Hunter's 
pacificatory marcli across the Transvaal, most of the 
war correspondents jumped to the conclusion that 
our period of usefulness was over, and made prepa- 
rations to leaye the army and return home. This 
opinion was strengthened by our meeting- many of 
our fellows in Johannesburg on the way down from 
Pretoria. For them the long strain of months of hard 
campaigning was over, and we all foregathered at 
Heath's Hotel to talk matters over and pass a few 
days in the enjoyment of comforts and luxuries that 
had long been denied us at the front. 

On every side in Johannesburg we saw the signs 
that justified its reputation as being in normal times 
the busiest and the gayest city in South Africa. Sub- 
stantial buildings of brick and stone lined all of its 
principal and paved streets ; and everywhere were 
evidences of the wealth for which, as one of the great 
mining centers of the world, it had grown famous. 
But at that time Johannesburg looked like a long- 
buried city that had just been dug out. The once 
busy offices and exchanges were empty and silent, 
and the market-places and streets were well-nigh de- 



SEEKING LORD METHUEN. 97 

serted, ecliomg but seldom to any other sound than 
the occasional footfalls of the military patrols. The 
shutters were down over most of the windows, and 
everywhere the walls were placarded with military 
proclamations and police notices. A great gap in the 
life of the city had been made when the refugees de- 
parted for Cape Town ; and the shutting down of the 
mines had driven away most of the great horde that 
had depended on them for employment. The needs 
of the army offered the only demands for work, and 
that demand was of course chiefly supplied by the 
troops. The strictest regulations of martial law gov- 
erned the movements of the shrunken civilian popu- 
lation, among whom were known to be many dis- 
affected persons who would eagerly welcome any 
promising chance to embarrass the military authori- 
ties. 

A few days after reaching Johannesburg, I took the 
train for Pretoria to learn at headquarters what the 
prospects there were of further resistance to the in- 
e^dtable from the Boers. My suspicions that much 
yet remained to be done were emphatically confirmed 
by Lord Stanley when I saw him again in that city. 
I found that a very thorough campaign against De 
Wet was being organized, with the object of finally 
crushing that ubiquitous Boer leader and putting an 
end to his harassing operations against the British 
rear. He was then in the Free State, hovering about 

7 



98 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Lord Metliuen's flanks, and making constant attacks 
upon small British garrisons and weak convoys ; and 
Lord Stanley advised me to join Lord Methuen at once 
if I wanted to be present at what he predicted would 
be some of the most interesting operations of the war. 
General Hunter's division, he told me, would now be 
employed in garrison duty, so that I could not hope 
to see further active service under him. It was a 
stroke of ill luck that only a few days after I had left 
Pretoria, General Ian Hamilton fell from his horse 
and broke his collar-bone, and General Hunter was 
appointed to the vacancy and assigned to a com- 
mand much more important than that which he had 
just led across the Transvaal. 

Lord Stanley could not tell me the exact where- 
abouts of Lord Methuen's division. He only knew 
that he was somewhere in the neighborhood of Heil- 
bron, in the Orange River colony. He warned me 
that the country between Johannesburg and Heil- 
bron was not entirely secure, and that I must be pre- 
pared to fall in with small raiding parties of the en- 
emy. I hated to miss the oj)i3ortunity he gave me, 
however, and decided to take the risk, trusting to 
good luck and to the aid of Lewis's resourcefulness 
to see me through. So I hurried back to Johannes- 
burg ; and on the morning of the next day, the 25th 
of June, took the road with my Cape cart, three 
horses, and Lewis. My companions of the march 



SEEKING LORD METHUEN. 99 

across the Transvaal had decided to proceed to Cape 
Town, so I had to make my journey alone. 

My plan was to strike the railway as soon as pos- 
sible, and follow the line to Wolvehoek, where I 
hoped to be able to get transportation over the 
branch line to Heilbron. We started out in beauti- 
ful weather; and, everything- favoring us, we made 
good progress that first day over the hills that sur- 
round Johannesburg. I found the country so peace- 
ful that I did not hesitate to stop at several Boer 
farms to buy bread and eggs. I had hoped to make 
Meyerton, where there was a small British post, that 
evening; but one of the horses gave out, and dark 
found us abreast of a mean Boer farmhouse at the 
roadside. There I decided to spend the night. 

For courtesy's sake I went up to the door and told 
the two women I found inside that with their per- 
mission I would spend the night in their yard. The 
women were surly, and professed not to understand 
English ; so I called Lewis up to translate my mes- 
sage into Dutch. They received it ungraciously, and 
told me that a few miles further on I would find 
better accommodations. Upon that I told them I 
should have to quarter myself upon them with or 
without their permission, and proceeded without fur- 
ther ado to pitch my bivouac against the inhospit- 
able wall of an outhouse. It was a cold and lonely 
spot ; but Lewis went cheerfully to work at his fire, 

LofC. 



100 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

prepared the evening meal, and after that was dis- 
posed of entertained me during my post prandial 
smoke with tales of his Boer wife and of early ad- 
ventures of his in the mines of Johannesburg and 
Kimberley. Three small boys from the farmhouse 
drew near and solemnly watched our behavior ; but 
a more friendly visitor was a companionable cat. I 
found her curled up among my rugs when I sought 
my humble couch, and there she insisted on spend- 
ing the night as my bed-fellow. Her contented pur- 
ring was the last sound in my ears as I dropped to 
sleep, and she greeted me in the same cheery fashion 
when I opened my eyes at dawn next morning. 

My horse seemed himself again after the night's 
rest ; and after eating a breakfast in company with 
the faithful cat, w^e started off again shortly after 
eight. At noon we reached Yereeniging, the last sta- 
tion north of the Vaal. There I found a small Brit- 
ish force, and was able to draw supplies for man and 
beast. My horse had weakened again, and I feared 
I had lost him; but he braced up after another rest, 
and at three o'clock we pushed on towards the Yaal. 
One could cross it by the railway foot-bridge, which 
was guarded by a sentry at either end, and by the 
drift. This latter was easier than that at Fourteen 
Streams, and Lewis got my cart across in safety, 
thanks to brave work by the two ponies. We pushed 
on to Yiljoen's Drift, a settlement six miles away. 



SEEKING LORD METHUEN. 101 

where there was another British post, and there I 
bivouacked for the night in the abandoned house of 
an English refugee. It was stripped of furniture, but 
was otherwise in spick and span condition. I par- 
ticularly rejoiced to find near by a commodious 
stable, where my tired horses could look forward to a 
comfortable night well-sheltered from the bitter cold 
which now always followed the setting of the sun. 
An old negro who had been left in charge of the 
place was busy painting the interior, in readiness for 
his master's return, when I arrived. His boss, he 
assured me, would be very glad to have me make 
myself at home, and thus welcomed I settled down 
to a comfortable night under cover. 

The character of the country had changed at once 
as soon as we crossed the Yaal. The kopjes which had 
marked the landscape to the north had disappeared. 
The veldt was flat, and, unrelieved by stick or stone, 
stretched away to the horizon parched and monoto- 
nous. The soil, too, had changed from red and hard 
to gray and soft, and the main road south was through 
heavy sand a good eighteen inches deep. These con- 
ditions prevailed for several miles, I learned the next 
morning ; and after striving in vain to urge my ponies 
through the sand, I sought out information of an 
easier way and struck out across the veldt, skirting 
this desert of impassable sand, De Wet, I learned, 
was leading Lord Methuen a merry puss-in-the- 



102 THE CHASE OE DE ^-ET. 

corner cliase, in wliicli lie found many opportunities 
to swoop down upon tlie railway. His latest exploit 
had been to cut the line north of Kroonstad ; and I 
began seriously to doubt if I should o-et through to 
Wolyehoek after all. 

We plodded on, howerer, and by noon were within 
five miles of my destination. There I outspanned 
by the side of the road for the midday halt. An 
army surgeon, riding up from Wolvehoek, stopped 
on his way by and gave me news. Ten men and an 
officer had been sni^Ded at the week before at Yiljoen's 
Drift, from a house flying the white flag. All ten had 
been wounded ; and the officer, who had just come 
out from England, had been killed. At Wolvehoek, 
the surgeon told me, they were in constant expecta- 
tion of an attack; and of this I found abundant evi- 
dence when I at last safely reached that little junction 
shortly before sunset that afternoon. The few build- 
ings were set down in an absolutely level plain, bare 
as far as the eye could reach of even a blade of grass, 
and burned black; for this was the countiy where the 
Boers set fire to the veldt scrub, for the double pur- 
pose of destroying the grazing and rendering the 
khaki of the British unifoiTQS useless as a conceal- 
ment. Against that dark background khaki showed 
up as conspicuoush- as pink coats in a hunting field, 
and it was the Boers in their dingy black who became 
invisible a short distance away. The few galvanized 



SEEKING LORD METHUEN. 103 

iron shanties had all been torn down for the sake of 
the wood that formed their framework, and alto^-ether 
the little camp presented a most doleful appearance. 
Captain McQnhinny of the Eoyal Irish was in com- 
mand of the small garrison, which consisted of a few 
hundred men of many different regiments who had 
been released by Lord Eoberts from the Boer prisons 
at Pretoria. Captain McQuhinny had no guns, and 
relied for protection against surprise upon a cun- 
ningly constructed barrier of " night entanglements " 
made out of barbed wire. The Boers were all about, 
he told me in a delightfully offhand way, and they 
often crept up after dark to amuse themselves sniping 
at the camp and the sentries ; but so far they had not 
summoned up nerve enough to make a serious attack, 
and the only sufferers by the barbed wire entangle- 
ments had been such of his own men as had forgotten 
they were there and had stumbled into them in the 
dark. Captain McQuhinny went on to tell me that 
Heilbron had been undergoing a siege as a result of 
the cutting of the branch line from Wolvehoek by 
Boer raiding parties. He had got the first supply- 
train through only the day before, thus relieving the 
force there, mostly McDonald's Highlanders, who for 
a week or more had been on quarter rations. 

That night was bitter cold. I spent it in a de- 
serted engine-house, with an iron water-tank for my 
couch. Next morning the good-hearted Captain Mc- 



104 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Quliinny got me transport on a supply-train bound 
for Heilbron, and I started on the last stage of my 
lonely trek seated in a truck crowded with the troop- 
ers of a regiment of lancers. The trucks were piled 
high with boxes of supplies. They oifered nothing 
in the way of comfortable seats ; but Tommy Atkins 
perched himself on top of them with his usual cheer- 
ful nonchalance, and he managed to extract great 
amusement, towards the end of the ride, when the 
jostling of the train proved too much for the equilib- 
rium of the boxes, and they began to fall out. A 
large force of Highlanders guarded the approaches 
to Heilbron, and the troopers on the train laughed 
until the tears ran down their cheeks over the an- 
tics of the " wee Jocks," as they called their kilted 
comrades, as they raced down the slopes after these 
extra rations. A shower of falling biscuit boxes 
marked the last few miles of our journey ; and we 
carried into Heilbron the merry memory of long 
lines of leaping Highlanders pursuing them into the 
depths of the ravines that lined the railway. 

The first thing I learned, on disembarking at Heil- 
bron, was that Lord Methuen had left the place a 
few days before. He was ex^Dected back at any time, 
however ; so I had Lewis ins^Dan, and we proceeded 
into town to find an abiding place. I found myself 
in a small village which, crowded as it was with 
troops, promised but little in the way of accommo- 



SEEKING LOED METHUEN. 105 

datious. I learned that it boasted of two hotels, 
however, and these I sought out at once. The first 
was already full ; and from the second I was turned 
away by the proprietor's wife, who insisted that as 
she was Dutch, and the Dutch and English were en- 
emies, her hotel was closed against all men in khaki. 
I commended her for her spirit, and fared forth again, 
to find shelter finally in an abandoned cottage, where 
in spite of the cold I made myself very comfortable, 
as campaigning teaches a man to do, for the two 
nights and days I spent in Heilbron. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

Peace-Making with Loed Methuen. 

It was in the morning of the second clay that I 
learned at General Colvile's headquarters that Lord 
Methuen was not coming back, but that the North- 
ampton regiment, then at Heilbron, had been ordered 
to join him, and would march in an hour. I at once 
made my preparations to march with them, and, pro- 
ceeding to the outskirts of the town, found Major 
Fawcett, their commanding officer, and was by him 
courteously invited to accompany him. I was wel- 
comed to the regimental mess by him and his hos- 
pitable officers, and for the fortnight that I spent with 
them was honored with every courtesy. 

Starting a little after noon, and marching at an 
easy pace under the genial sun, we reached Lord 
Methuen's camp at Paardekraal at four. That eve- 
ning I found Major Streatfield of the Grenadier 
Guards, press censor on his staff, to whom I had a 
letter from Lord Stanley, and was given a cordial 
welcome to the division as the only war correspond- 
ent they had seen for months. During the two weeks 
which I spent with that division I saw much of Lord 
Methuen, the genial officers of his staff, and those of 
the other regiments under him, especially the North- 



PEACE-MAKING WITH LOKD METHUEN. 107 

amptons and tlie gallant North Lancasliires, who, 
under Colonel Kekewich, had so distinguished them- 
selves in the defense of Kimberley. But here again 
I was disappointed in my hopes of seeing any fight- 
ing. We spent the next fortnight in trekking over a 
small area of country and, in camp near Kroonstad, 
sending convoys now and then to the latter place and 
to Lindley, whose garrison Lord Methuen was sup- 
porting ; but devoting most of the time to scouring 
farms, and never getting within reach of De Wet. I 
soon realized that to catch him would take a more 
nimble force than Lord Methuen's. That officer was 
one's ideal of a knightly soldier ; but it was easy to 
see in the eccentricities of his conduct how sad an 
effect upon his mind the campaign since Magersfon- 
tein and Modder river had had. He was no longer 
the man to direct serious operations in the field. But 
he was so courteous and kindly a gentleman, and he 
commanded such devoted loyalty from the officers of 
his staff, that one could feel nothing but the sincerest 
sympathy for him in his misfortunes. 

The work that Lord Methuen was then engaged in 
was the dullest that soldiers are ever called upon to 
do. It well illustrated the drudgery that goes to 
make up peace -making at the fag end of a war. Once 
in a while we heard news that gave us some hope of 
running across the elusive De Wet, but we never 
arrived in time. The futility of these operations was 



108 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

typified dsbj after day when a hare lost its bearings 
and ran through the cam}). A great hue and cry at 
once arose; stones, bayonets, sticks of wood, and 
eA^ery thing else that would serve for a missile went 
flying through the air, and dogs went yelping after ; 
but the fleet hare seldom failed to run the gauntlet 
successfully and get safely aw^ay. 

Handicapped as he was, not least by slow-moving 
infantry and ox transport, there was nothing for Lord 
Methuen to do but wander about from place to place 
much as he had done since leaving Boshof in the 
middle of May, despatching conveys now and then 
into beleaguered towns, but generally using his yeo- 
men and his guns in stripping farms of their stock 
and produce in the effort to reduce the resources of 
the enemj;. Of this wandering and stripping I found 
both officers and men heartily sick ; by that time there 
was not even the spice of variety to it. One day was 
exactly like another. The General w^ould start off in 
the early morning, with a few companies of Yeo- 
manry and a couple of guns, and after a march of an 
hour or so over the treeless, desolate, monotonous 
veldt, would reach a farm, differing in no essential 
particular from anj^ of the scores visited daily dur- 
ing the preceding weeks. There would be the clump 
of poplars, the one or two pans of water enclosed in 
a dam, a mud puddle in the yard in which ducks and 
geese were swimming, and the few outhouses near 



PEACE-MAKING WITH LORD METHUEN. 109 

tlie main dwellino-, wliicli was generally mean and un- 
sightly, with an untidy kitchen garden at the back, — 
or at the front, for it was always difficult to tell which 
was which. AVhen the General and his staff came up 
there was always the same group on the doorstep : 
an old woman in soiled and ragged clothes, who 
promptly began to weep ; a middle-aged woman, gen- 
erally with a baby in her arms, who wore throughout 
the proceedings a mask of imj)ervious stolidity ; and 
anywhere from three to eight children, ranging from 
fifteen years of age down to four or three, who wept 
or not as the spirit moved them. The General's first 
question always was, "Where is the man? " The re- 
ply, in those parts at least, was almost invariably, 
*'0n commando." By the terms of Lord Roberts's 
forage orders, that answer doomed the women to 
suffer confiscation of all their stock and forage, sav- 
ing only enough for the household to live upon. If 
the owner happened to be on his farm, then onh^ 
what was needed for the use of the troops was requi- 
sitioned, always provided he took the oath to abstain 
from further fighting. 

Such was the foreground of this constantly-re- 
peated picture. In the middle distance were troop- 
ers, their horses standing by, loading bundles of 
forage and bags of mealies into wagons ; in the back- 
ground, Kaffirs were rounding up and driving off 
herds of sheep and oxen ; and beyond all, scattered 



110 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

kopjes, and tlie interminable khaki-colored veldt. 
This was the fag-end of the war all over the defunct 
Free State, save in occasional spots, where some 
force did succeed in coming in touch with De Wet, 
and an insignificant skirmish, generally without re- 
sult, ensued. And the w^arriors who had fought at 
Magersfontein and Modder river were sick of it — 
sick of the sight of the shabby women and the un- 
tidy farms, and of the sound of sobs. They knew 
this uncongenial work had to be done, for each of 
these farms was used as a depot by the Boers, who 
would stay out just so long as they could find sup- 
plies. But they yearned to have it over with; to 
finish De Wet in one square, stand-up fight, and to 
be on their way home. It certainly was not an in- 
spiring sight to see a Lieut en ant-General of the 
British army sitting on the stoep of a dingy farm- 
house saying he hoped the w^ar would soon be over, 
to a group of women wringing their hands in his face. 
It was Lord Roberts's opinion that with De Wet's 
capture the war would be over. Everybody hoped 
he was right, for both officers and men in that di- 
vision were w^earied by those futile pursuits of an 
enemy that would not stand, by the sudden orders to 
move at dark hours in the cold mornings, and by the 
forced marches that too often followed them, with 
nothing at the end but evidences that the enemy had 
been there, but, having received timely warning of 



PEACE-MAKINa WITH LORD METHUEN. Ill 

Lord Methuen's approach, had cleared out the day 
before. 

It would not be fair to say that this was the only 
work that Methuen's force was fit for. The Third 
Yeomanry, the three batteries of artillery, the North- 
ampton and North Lancashire regiments of foot, 
were as effective for any kind of work as any of their 
comrades, as they had proved recently enough at 
Swartzkopjefontein and at Lindley and at Heilbron. 
But it was the opinion at headquarters that pacifica- 
tion, which was almost entirely police work, was all 
that Lord Methuen, whatever troops he commanded, 
could be relied upon for. 

I early resolved to take my first opportunity to flee 
to other fields. And at last it came. On Thursday, 
the 12th of July, Lord Methuen received sudden 
orders to move at once with his whole force to Kroon- 
stad, then some forty miles from his camp. What 
the orders meant no one knew ; but it was surmised 
that Lord Roberts wanted the division at Pretoria, 
and it turned out later that that guess was correct. 
But to me it meant the disappearance of probably 
my last chance to see any further active service, for 
it took us away from the fields that De Wet was 
scouring. We had heard from Lindley that Generals 
Clements and Paget, after heavy fighting, had forced 
the Boer down upon Bethlehem, on the Basutoland 
border ; and, what was particularly galling news to 



112 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

me, tliat General Hunter, whom I had left at Johan- 
nesburg- in the belief that he would have no more 
fig-hting to do, was hurrying dow^n towards that town 
with 20,000 troops of all arms. And so it was with a 
heavy heart that I made my preparations for the 
march to Kroonstad. But an hour later my prospects 
had completely changed. A small detachment of 
Yeomanry rode into camp just as Lord Methuen's 
advance guard was moving off. The detachment had 
left Bethlehem two days before as escort to an officer 
bearing des^Datches from General Clements to Lord 
Methuen. It was to return immediately, marching 
back to Lindley that night and proceeding thence 
with all speed to rejoin General Clements, who ^dth 
General Hunter was closing in on De Wet and was 
expected to give battle at any moment. It would 
have been folly for me to attempt to get to Bethlehem 
alone. With this escort, however, I could do it ; and 
in ten minutes I had made my decision. I knew the 
officer, a young Lieutenant of Yeomanry, who was to 
take the detachment back, and he gladly accepted the 
offer of my company. And at six that evening we 
were off. Lord Methuen's rear guard had already 
disappeared into the southwest, and all that was left 
of what had been before a busy camp of five thou- 
sand men was a score of smouldering rubbish heaps, 
onto which the troops had flung oatsacks, empty tins, 
broken saddle-girths, and all the other refuse that 



PEACE-MAKING WITH LORD METHUEN. 113 

was not worth carrying- away, not to mention some 
that was, which rewarded the Kaffirs who roamed 
over the scene, after the force had departed, search- 
ing- for what might be of use to them. Black dark- 
ness had now settled down over the veldt, and with 
the night had come the bitter cold of the South 
African midwinter. Lindley, whither our way led, 
was a ^Ye hours' march away. But the scent of 
battle was in our nostrils now ; and darkness, cold, 
and danger were utterly negligible quantities. My 
companion gave his final orders for the march, sent 
forward his advance guard of five, assigned a cou^Dle 
of troopers to either flank, and detailed half a dozen 
more to act as rear guard ; and with the order " Walk, 
March ! " he and I j)laced ourselves at the head of the 
main body of a score of troopers and started forward. 



CHAPTEE XIY. 

With Hunter Again. 

We marched for three hours, and then halted by the 
side of the road for a brief rest and a scanty meal of 
hot coffee and biscuits. Resuming our way an hour 
later, we reached Lindley's picket lines a little after 
one o'clock in the biting cold of the morning, and 
shortly afterwards filed into the sleeping town and 
took up our quarters in a house where a score more 
of the little force, under command of a cheery young 
Lieutenant of Yeomanry, had been left the day before. 

We remained in Lindley during the following day 
to rest our tired horses. I visited the officers of the 
regiment guarding the town, whose acquaintance I 
had made on a previous visit with a convoy sent in 
by Lord Methuen. Lindley was a town which was 
occupied, abandoned, and re-occupied alternately by 
Boers and British half a dozen times. It needed a 
division to hold it ; but it was garrisoned for weeks 
by one battalion of a famous regiment, under the 
command of an officer so deficient in intelligence and 
capacity, in all the qualities, in short, that a Colonel 
ought to have, that hardly one of his mess could speak 
of him without disiDlaying either rage or mirth. The 
other officers of the little force were, with one or two 



WITH HUNTER AGAIN. 115 

exceptions, as fine a set of men as one could meet 
anywhere. Most of tliem had seen service in India, 
and war and death had no terrors for them. I found 
them encamped on the upper slope of a huge rock, in 
the only spot in the place where they could be shelled 
from only three sides at once instead of four, and ex- 
pecting every moment an attack from DeWet, for 
which they had a w^eek before been warned by helio- 
graph to hold themselves in readiness. But they 
jested as to what their Colonel would do when the 
enemy a^Dpeared, as much as they speculated on the 
chances of relief ; and their only grievance was that 
their C. O. was such a " bloody fool " that they couldn't 
have a chance to do what they knew the regiment was 
capable of doing. 

We left Lindley, sixty strong, early in the morning 
of Saturday, and took the road for Bethlehem. The 
young officer whom we had rejoined at Lindley and 
I got much entertainment out of the journey. In 
accordance with his orders from General Paget, we 
searched many farms for hidden stores of forage, of 
which there was great lack among the British troops 
in Bethlehem. Of this we secured a fair quantity ; 
and we also picked up some fowls, which proved a 
most welcome addition to our somewhat scanty sup- 
ply of food. Straying away from the line of march, 
I also ran across a herd of horses that had been left 
to pick up their ow^n living on the veldt when their 



116 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

owners went off on commando. Among tliem was a 
fine yonng three-year-old which had never been 
broken, as I found out to my cost when, after driving 
him into camp, I caught him and tried to ride him. 
He would have made an ideal saddle-horse had I had 
time to give him a few more lessons ; but I had to 
abandon him later when we started off after De Wet. 

We camped that night on the farm of Command- 
ant Prinsloo. He was in the field with De Wet at 
the time ; but we were welcomed by his wife and an 
interesting family of twelve, mostly dark-haired girls, 
the eldest of whom was fifteen. Their father was a 
man of parts, who, unlike the majority of his country- 
men, appreciated the value of a good education ; and 
his two eldest daughters could speak English. That 
evening they invited us officers into the house and 
entertained us for an hour or more singing hymns to 
the accompaniment of a parlor organ. 

On the road next morning we got into communica- 
tion with General Paget, and I learned to my great 
delight that General Hunter and his whole force were 
still at Bethlehem, watching De Wet, who remained 
in the hills a few miles south of the to^Ti. At one 
o'clock we reached the place ; and shortly afterwards 
I greeted General Hunter once again. He welcomed 
me with all his old grave courtesy, and told me what 
he could of the situation. De Wet was strongly en- 
trenched in the hills half a dozen miles to the south, 



WITH HUNTER AGAIN. 117 

with a force estimated at fifteen hundred men and six 
or seven guns. General Hunter had been prevented 
by the difficulty in getting- supplies from closing in 
on him at once ; but he hoped by the end of the week 
to be able to complete the cordon that he was draw- 
ing around him. 

How that hope was disappointed is now history. 
That very night the wily De Wet forestalled General 
Hunter's plans by sli^Dping through the lines held by 
Generals Clements and Paget ; and on the next day 
there began the pursuit the incidents of which have 
furnished some of the most dramatic and exciting 
episodes of the war. 



CHAPTER XY. 

The Chase of De Wet Begins. 

. I woke up next morning witli tlie sound of big guns 
in my ears. Hurrying over to headquarters to learn 
what was up, I found standing outside a group of 
officers, conspicuous among whom was General Hun- 
ter talking to a grizzled veteran in the uniform of a 
brigadier. The former told me that De Wet with a 
strong force had slipped out through Slabbert's Nek 
during the night, had got safely past Clements and 
Paget, and was now fighting a rear-guard action with 
the latter's force. General Eidley, the officer with 
whom he was talking, was about to take the field with 
his brigade of mounted infantry, and give chase ; and 
General Hunter advised me to accompany him. He 
thereupon introduced me to General Ridley, who was 
even then receiving his final orders. 

There was no time to lose. Learning the road they 
were to take, I hurried back to the Royal Hotel, 
where I had left Lewis. He was not in sight when 
I galloxoed into the yard, and my heart sank lest he 
should have gone away beyond call. But fortunately 
he was not far off ; I found him after a brief hur- 
ried search, and set him to work at once repack- 
ing the cart, inspanning, and getting everything 



THE CHASE OF DE WET BEGINS. 119 

ready for an immediate start. We were both well 
used to such quick marching orders, and in ten min- 
utes everything- was done. I ordered him to proceed 
at once to the sx3ot on the outskirts of the town 
where we had first halted the day before, to wait 
for me there, and then to follow us out along the 
Senekal road. I then galloped back to headquarters, 
and found General Ridley just on the point of leav- 
ing. 

That scene was just as one would expect to see it 
described in a book or depicted on the stage. The 
two Generals, erect and military, stood in the centre 
of a group formed by the officers of their staffs, 
those of General Hunter being on foot, while General 
Ridley's attendants were already in the saddle. An 
orderly, with rifle slung on shoulder, and bandolier 
stuffed full of cartridges, held the latter's horse for 
him to mount ; while another orderly stood at his 
own horse's head near by, bearing the red pennant 
of a brigadier, which it was his duty to carry behind 
his General. In the background was the low red- 
painted cottage where General Hunter had estab- 
lished his headquarters, with flagstaff in front from 
which floated his crimson flag, its folds stirring lazily 
in the gentle puffs of wind that now and again blew 
down the dusty street. Just as I joined the group 
General Ridley mounted, his standard-bearer drew up 
behind him, General Hunter called out a cheery 



120 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

good-bye, and, putting spurs to our steeds, we started 
off at a gallop. The chase of De Wet had begun. 

Our little cavalcade of eig-ht went clatterino- 
through the main street of the town without draw- 
ing rein. Women and children scampered out of our 
way, and then stood still to gaze at us. At the ap- 
pointed spot I passed Lewis, and signaled to him to 
follow. Leaving Bethlehem behind us we rode stead- 
ily on for an hour and a half, easing our horses only 
at the foot of the occasional hills, and at about sun- 
set drew up at a respectable farmhouse built on the 
slope of one of the smaller kopjes lying at the foot 
of the pass through which De Wet had slix)ped out 
early that morning, when he left his eyrie in the tow- 
ering hills that loomed grim and dark before us along 
the border of Basutoland. General Ridley's brigade 
had already arrived, and was encamped near by. 

We dined that evening in the farmhouse, in some- 
what haphazard fashion, nearly every mouthful in- 
terrupted by the arrival of an orderly bringing de- 
spatches from General Paget, telling of the day's 
engagement and of his j)lans for the morrow. Their 
burden was that De Wet, accompanied by his brother 
Piet and ex-President Steyn of the defunct Orange 
Free State, had, as General Hunter had already in- 
formed us, slipped out through Slabbert's Nek dur- 
ing the preceding night ; that his force was probably 
eighteen hundred strong, with a dozen guns ; that he 



THE CHASE OF DE WET BEGINS. 121 

liad a convoy of some hundred bullock wagons and 
Cape carts ; that Pag-et and Clements had been en- 
gaged all day with his rear guard without substan- 
tial result ; and that General Bidley could best as- 
sist by marching as early as possible next morning 
and joining him with all speed. General Hunter, to 
whom General Ridley forwarded these re^Dorts, made 
a different disposition, however, of the forces. He 
retained Clements and Paget near Bethlehem ; and 
late that night sent orders for Ridley to attach him- 
self to General Broadwood's force, then a part of 
Paget's brigade, and to proceed with him in pursuit 
of the enemy. General Ridley, late that evening, ex- 
pressed himself as sanguine that we should catch up 
with the latter next day. But we learned later that 
the Boer General had got his main body away with- 
out firing a shot, assigning only a handful of men 
under Piet De Wet to occupy Paget and Clements, 
and thus cover his main movement ; and it was three 
days later before the British got in touch with him 
again. 

Calling in his officers and giving them their final 
orders that night, General Ridley struck camp in the 
chilly dawn of the next day. At about ten we caught 
up with General Broadwood, who had waited for us, 
and went forward at once. Our combined force, com- 
prising Ridley's Mounted Infantry and Broadwood's 
Household Cavalry, was about equal in numbers to 



122 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

De Wet's, but inferior in artillery, a circumstance 
which rendered it unsafe for Broadwood to attack, 
and fulh^ justified General Hunter's orders to at- 
tempt nothing more for the jDresent than to keep as 
close behind the enemy as possible and harass his 
rear until another force could be stationed across his 
path. 

This General Hunter hoped to accomplish with 
Colonel Little and Colonel Ewart, then moving down 
towards Bethlehem with a large conyoy from Lind- 
ley. But these officers failed to get their orders to 
co-operate in time ; and when we joined them the 
next day we found that, being in ignorance of the 
near neighborhood of our force, they had stood aside 
and let De Wet pass, thankful at having escaped an 
attack on their convoy. As a result, De Wet had 
succeeded in slipping between the two forces and 
now had a start of a good eighteen miles. 

General Broadwood added some of Colonel Ewart's 
guns and cavahy to his own force, and then resumed 
his dreary work of trying to keep on De Wet's trail. 
For information as to the direction he had taken, we 
had to rely upon the natives and such interpretation 
of hoof and wheel-marks as scouts in our force could 
supply. The natives were mostly only too willing to 
help us ; but the wily Boer doubled back and forth 
and picked out his course with consummate cunning, 
and our march was interrupted bj^ frequent halts dur- 



THE CHASE OF DE WET BEGINS. 123 

ing which the two Generals w^oulcl cross-question the 
Kaffirs w^hom we encountered, or would mount some 
hig-h kopje and carefully scan the distant horizon for 
some dust-cloud or other sig-n of our quarry, while 
our scouts went afield searching for the trail. 

During the first few days we picked up only the 
scantiest scraps of news, valuable only as going to 
prove that the course which we had followed with so 
many turnings had led us in a generally correct di- 
rection. But there were no evidences that we were 
closing the gap between us. Once or twice the scent 
failed us altogether ; and looking forth across the 
trackless veldt to the horizon, cut up by close, en- 
circling kopjes and ranges which sadly limited the 
view, and taking note as we could not but do of the 
innumerable ways by which our enemy might double 
on his tracks or otherwise utterly baffle us, we began 
to weary of this apparently profitless rising in the 
cheerless, chilling dawn, and to despair of any suc- 
cess in the chase. But the scent when lost was al- 
ways picked up again, thanks to General Broad- 
wood's shrewd judgment in discriminating between 
the true information and the false ; and in the after- 
noon of Thursday, the fourth day of the chase, we 
were rewarded for our ]3ersistence by catching sight 
of our quarry at last. 

We were then going westward on a line some dozen 
miles north of Lindley, which town we had encircled 



124 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

in a course of tlie sliape of tlie letter " S," the scent 
haying led ns eastward to the south of Lindlej- on 
Tuesday. On that Thursday morning Kaffirs re- 
ported to us that the Boers were not more than a few 
hours' march ahead ; and not long afterwards, from 
the top of a rise, we made out dimly in the far distance 
some of their wagons, just disai^pearing over the 
skyline. As the Boers when trekking always sent 
their wagons on ahead, we knew that we must be at 
last fairly close upon their rear guard. 

Pressing on with a new eagerness, towards noon we 
came across their laager of the night before, with the 
embers still smouldering in the ant-hills, which pro- 
yide yery seryiceable oyens for the ingenious South 
African ; and an hour later we caught sight of figures 
standing' out clearly on the skyline some four miles 
ahead. We had run them down at last. 

The pace of the column was now quickened, and 
our adyance and flank guards were pushed ahead to 
reconnoitre. Generals Broadwood and E-idley, with 
whom I was riding, trotted ahead with the adyance 
guard towards the place in the skyline where the 
Boers coiild now be easily counted with the naked 
eye. The officers halted some fifty yards ahead of a 
kraal of Kaffir huts and walled enclosures, and, taking 
out their glasses, closely scrutinized the skyline. A 
moment later, with unexpected suddenness, the fight 
began, the Boers themselyes taking the initiatiye bj^ 



THE CHASE OF DE WET BEGINS. 125 

opening- fire on our little group wliere it stood out con- 
spicuously in the open. The wily Boer commander 
had pur^Dosely placed his men in i)lain view on the 
skyline, in order to draw our attention away from 
a ridge below, and within fourteen hundred yards of 
us. The ridge at that distance attracted no notice, 
as it seemed at a casual glance to be a part of the 
main slope leading up to the skyline upon which all 
eyes were directed. As a matter of fact, a valley 
separated the main slope from the ridge. The latter 
was crowned by the partly -broken -down stone wall 
of an old cattle-pen, and behind this wall were posted 
half a dozen Boer sharpshooters, who knew to a foot 
the range to our position and were favored by all the 
conditions necessary to a good aim. 

Our first indication of their presence was the sud- 
den appearance of some spurts of dust on the ground 
some twenty-five yards ahead of us, which was in- 
stantly followed by that unmistakable sound of rifle 
fire. The next moment we heard the shrill humming 
of bullets (it is not an unpleasant sound) in our ears 
as a second volley passed over our heads, and the 
Mausers cracked again. A quiet order, " Take cover, 
men ! " came from General Broadwood. The little 
force wheeled their horses to the right about just as 
the Boers fired a third volley. One of our men was 
hit then ; but he gave no sign of it, and it w^as only 
afterwards that we learned that the Boer sharpshoot- 



126 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

ers had found a mark at last. Officers and men 
walked back and took cover behind the walls in oui' 
rear. " It's the only way to do when you have men 
with yon," said General Ridley to me as we found a 
nook on the firing line whence in comparative safety 
to watch the effect of the shootino- about to beo-in. 
" If I had been alone, though," he added, " I'd have 
run like hell." 

One feels a natural resentment at being fired at 
from such close quarters and being so nearly hit. 
General Broadwood at once called u]} his guns, and 
in less time than it takes to tell it his cavalry had 
dismounted, led theii' horses under cover, and, with 
the gleam of battle in their eyes, had slipped into 
places behind the wall at which we were already 
standing and opened fire on the ridge. A moment 
later the guns began to speak ; and at once the hills 
were resounding with the rattle of Mausers, the 
cracking of the British Metf ords at our side in reply, 
the quick barking of the pom-i)oms, and the hoarse 
roar of the fifteen-pounders. The Boers who had 
first fired on us broke cover very quickly, and we 
soon saw them scuttling u^^ the main slope at full 
gallop towards the skyline. Two of our field-guns 
blazed away at the scattering group ; but our fire 
was not quite true, and they all got away. 

In the meantime, from a farmhouse on oui* left and 
from other Iurking-X3laces, other bands had opened 



THE CHASE OF DE WET BEGINS. 127 

fire on us, and the peculiar double rattle of the 
Mausers, sounding- for all the world like the blows of 
a hammer on an ii'on boiler, became more incessant 
than ever. Maxims and field-guns were at once 
trained on these places too ; and Colonel Legge, with 
some of the Australians, was sent to help clear them 
out. This he quickly accomplished ; and, urged on 
by Tommy's extremely accurate rifle fire and by good 
shooting by the gunners, the Boers were soon scut- 
tling from all their advanced positions. Those on 
the skyline opposite our centre were also on the move 
now, scampering away from the screaming shells that 
were dropping all about them ; and Colonel De Lisle 
with eight hundred mounted infantry galloped around 
our right to hustle them along. From the ridge 
originally held by them he advanced to turn them 
still more ; and as he pushed on, the centre, led by 
General Ridley, followed in support. The gallant 
De Lisle found a hornet's nest in a spruit beyond the 
rise, and suffered a score of casualties in clearing it 
out ; but he gave the Boers all that he got, and more. 
On the left the enemy would not stand before Legge, 
though three of the latter's Australians fell victims 
to a ruse on the part of some Boers dressed in British 
khaki and helmets, who beckoned them within easy 
range and then with a curse shot them down. These 
dashing colonials also lost one of their best officers, 
Major Moore. He was hit in the thigh by an ex- 



128 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

plosive bullet, and bled to death before help could 
reach him. 

Meanwhile General Hidley went galloping over the 
field with tireless energy, taking close note of every 
move. I rode with him, and paid for that privilege 
by being shot at twenty times before darkness put 
an end to the fighting. The brigadier scorned to 
take any precautions whatever, and always followed 
the shortest line between one advanced position and 
the next. The consequence was that he was con- 
stantly on the skyline and as constantly being fired 
at by the Boers. But the latter, though they came 
uncomfortably near us, and dropped several men 
near by, couldn't quite hit us ; and General Hidley 
and all who were in immediate attendance upon him 
came off scot free. 

By the time night fell we had hustled the Boer 
rear guard along six miles in three hours, and found 
ourselves in x^ossession of their main position. There 
both Generals established their headquarters, and 
orderlies were sent off to locate the different units of 
our force and bring them closer in from their scat- 
tered positions. General Ridley's transport had not 
come up, nor had mine; but General Broadwood hos- 
pitably invited us to share his mess. Hunger was 
thus satisfied; but we had no protection from the 
biting chill of the night air, our greatcoats being out 
of reach with our other baggage. Our supper fin- 



THE CHASE OF DE WET BEGINS. 129 

ishecl, and our transport still failing- to put in an ap- 
pearance, we drew up around a fire some Tommies 
had built, and there in a close circle we sat down on 
the ground, each, from the General down, taking- 
turns at warming first our hands and faces and then 
turning to give our freezing backs a chance. There we 
sat or lay, not very comfortable, but cheerful withal, 
and passed the time in one way or another, chatting 
or trying to snatch a little sleep, until just before 
midnight, when our baggage finally found us, and we 
rolled up in our blankets to pass the rest of the night 
in warmth and comfort. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

De Wet at Bay on the Yaal. 

General Broadwood had reasoned that it was hope- 
less to attemj)t to catch De Wet while hampered by 
so slow-moving a convoy as we were taking- with us, 
and so decided to load as much in the way of sup- 
plies as we could carry in light wagons and carts 
and to cut loose from the rest of the baggage, which 
could follow on at its own more leisurely pace. To 
carry out this decision involved a delay of several 
hours; and when we started on again, a little after 
noon on the following day, De Wet had got another 
start, and it was five days later when we ran him down 
again. 

But not once during that time did he get far ahead 
of us ; the pace was beginning to tell upon him too. 
Firing began again on the first day just after dawn, 
from scattered parties of the enemy who had lingered 
behind De Wet's main column to harass us, and our 
advance patrols were able to keep in almost constant 
touch with him. On the third day we crossed the 
Rhenoster, and struck the railway at Kopjes Station, 
where we again had to halt for a whole afternoon to 
replenish our stock of supplies, then practically ex- 
hausted. There, however, we learned that DeAVet 



DE WET AT BAY ON THE VAAL. 131 

was only six miles ahead of us, and hopes that we 
would speedily catch u^d with him again arose, De 
Wet had found time and opportunity, however, to 
inflict some more damag-e on his foes. Crossing the 
railway to the south of Rhenoster river, almost at the 
scene of his earlier mail-burning debauch, he had cut 
it and the telegraph line for several miles, and had also 
captured another train which conveniently steamed 
up within his reach. This train contained many tons 
of " hospital comforts," dainties and delicacies of va- 
rious kinds for the sick and wounded, and a hundred 
odd soldiers as a guard. Both of these lots Christian 
annexed, and then proceeded north towards Yrede- 
fort and the Yaal, which, according to Lord E-oberts's 
information, he intended crossing, that he might bring 
aid and comfort to his sore-pressed ally, OomPaul. 

As soon as Broadwood had loaded a fresh stock of 
supplies on his wagons, we were off on the trail again. 
The first day was marked only by the usual evidences 
that the hare was not far ahead of the hounds. On 
Monday evening we camped eight miles south of 
Yredefort ; and on Tuesday morning were away again 
at dawn. At nine o'clock, when within a mile of Yre- 
defort, we met with the first encouragement, in the 
shape of ^yq wagons, which we caught sight of a 
couple of miles to our left. We could see as we came 
into view that they were moving at top speed ; and 
a squad of cavalrymen were at once sent off in pur- 



132 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

suit. Soon the welcome sound of shooting gave us 
final proof that they were the enemy's, and we all felt 
sure that he was at last within our clutches ; we had 
never got within reach of any part of his convoy be- 
fore. 

Satisfied that the small party he had detached 
could deal with the wagons, General Broadwood took 
his main force on into the little town of Yredefort. 
There, we were told, the enemy had spent the pre- 
vious night. There for the moment officers and men 
gave their whole attention to the replenishment of 
mess suxDplies, for during a long absence from shops 
such luxuries as tobacco and food other than army 
rations had become uncomfortably scarce. The re- 
sult was a descent in force upon the two general 
stores and one bakery in town, while small parties 
went galloping from house to house in search of 
butter and bread and eggs. There was no looting, 
everything being paid for according to the British 
fashion ; but the press was such that the inhabitants 
had to trust to the honesty of the troojDS, who 
swarmed behind counters and everywhere else seek- 
ing what they might devour. 

But meanwhile those five wagons had not yet been 
captured. The party first sent after them had proved 
too weak to beat off the Boer escort, and a stronger 
force of three hundred mounted infantry had been 
sent galloping off to overtake the party, which by 



DE WET AT BAY ON THE VAAL. 133 

this time was drawing near the hills that line the 
Yaal. Here, it speedily developed, the Boers were 
posted in force to cover the retreat of the wagons. 
The chase grew most exciting as the horsemen, taking 
snai^shots now, drew nearer to the wagons, which in 
their turn were rapidly approaching their own goal. 
For a moment it looked as if they would get away ; 
but just in the nick of time the British troopers 
caught them up. There was a sharp skirmish almost 
under the noses of the supporting Boers, but it 
quickly ended in Tommy's favor ; and the wagons, 
together with eighteen Boers found inside, were soon 
on their way back to the rear under a strong escort. 

It ha^dng become evident that the Boers were hold- 
ing the hills in force. Colonel Legge had been ordered, 
so soon as he had captured the wagons, to recon- 
noitre ahead, but General Ridley had particularly 
cautioned him ag-ainst advancinof too far. This can- 
tion, however, Colonel Legge did not strictly heed, 
but led his force of between three and four hundred, 
into a position which subsequently became untenable. 
The Boers unmasked a gun on their right flank, and 
Legge speedily found himself under an extremely 
heavy shell and rifle fire, which soon began to tell. 
How heavy it was is indicated by the circumstance 
that during the hour that the fight lasted his men 
fired 23,000 rounds. 

For the time he could hold his own, his men being 



134 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

under good cover on a farm. But General Broad- 
wood, seeing- how strong a position the Boers held, 
and in what force (it was evident that they had deter- 
mined to make a stand on the Yaal), did not deem it 
prudent to risk a general engagement, and gave the 
order for a general retirement to a ridge a couple of 
miles in his rear. The guns were placed in position 
to cover the retreat of the flanks, and slowly and re- 
luctantly Legge's men abandoned the farm. It was 
during his retreat that practically all the day's casual- 
ties occurred. A force of some seven hundred Boers 
had come out into the open in their attemjDt to out- 
flank Legge — a rare manoeuvre for them. They failed 
of their object ; but they killed or wounded thirty of 
Legge's men during the running fight. The retire- 
ment was finally effected in good order, however, and 
the whole force bivouacked in face of the enemy's 
position about four miles away. 

There it remained for nearly two weeks, awaiting 
further instructions from Lord Roberts, and for the 
reinforcements which General Broadwood at once 
asked for. The enemy also held his position, making 
no attempt to cross the Yaal. Under these circum- 
stances, what was needed was the despatch of a force 
from the north to attack De Wet in the rear. If 
Lord Roberts could have got one down in time it 
would have been another Paardeburg. But it was 
useless to hope for Broadwood alone to settle the 



DE WET AT BAY ON THE VAAL. 135 

matter. The Boers, as it later developed, were fully 
twice his strength by this time, thanks to accessions 
from among" burghers who had taken the oath of 
neutrality. As De Wet passed through the districts 
supposed to have been pacified, these burghers dug 
up their buried rifles and flocked to his standard ; and 
his force was not far short of 3,500 strong when he 
took up his j30sition along the Yaal near Yredefort. 
In addition to their superiority in numbers, the Boers 
had the advantage of an exceptionally strong iDOsi- 
tion. The war had made it plain that a force four 
times as large is needed to cope with an enemy thus 
placed and armed with modern weapons, although on 
this occasion GeUo Ridley was confident that it could 
be done with another b'lttalion of infantry to hold 
the centre while the cavalry turned the flanks, and 
another field battery. Without some reinforcements, 
however, Gen. Broadwood was unquestionably right 
in retiring. If he had attacked, it would only have 
been to repeat Magersfontein. And what a reverse 
of that magnitude would have meant at that stage of 
the war can be imagined. 

These two engagements of Broadwood's were not 
to be classed as battles, nor did they bear important 
results. But they were interesting, if for no other 
reason than in giving further evidence that every 
fight or skirmish in which the British were engaged 
gave opportunities for the disi3lay of the highest 



136 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

courage. Tlie young officer on tlie staff of coiu'se 
faces death twenty times a day on Lis trips to and 
from the firing line with the General's orders. But, 
in addition, one constantly sees or hears of deeds 
such as one performed during this latest fight with 
De Wet, the official report of which carried with it a 
recommendation for the Victoria Cross. One of the 
medical officers was behind the fu'ing line with 
Colonel Legge's corps, when an officer fell some dis- 
tance in front, shot through the stomach. The Boers 
were pouring in a hot fii'e from a distance of only 
three hundred yards, but the "med" ran out into it, 
picked up the wounded man, and brought him in. A 
similar incident occurred at a ki'aal near the farm- 
house occupied by Legge's men. It was held by a 
body of Australians when the order came to retu'e. 
Another body was in the open, and both had been 
outflanked by the Boers. An officer requested the 
Australians to hold theii' i^osition for a few moments to 
cover the retirement of a small party who were bring- 
ing in a wounded officer. The colonials were falling 
fast, but they stayed. I saw theii' Captain come in later, 
leading a dozen trooj)ers. " These are all I hare left 
out of a squadi'on," he said. There was a bullet-hole 
through his cap, and the ambulance was just i^assing 
slowly by with one of his men, with a shattered ann, 
walking beside it, and thi'ee more inside. 
The young officer, especially he of the crack regi- 



DE WET AT BAY ON THE VAAL. 137 

ments, often talks with a drawl, and appears to be 
bored with all the features of life. But he is at his 
best in action. Then his utter indifference to every- 
thing, whether it be bullets or a bit of repartee, sits 
very well on him, and you have nothing but admira- 
tion for the calmness with which he salutes his Gen- 
eral with a "Right, sir!" and gallops off with his 
orders to the hottest part of the field. His women- 
folk should see him then. They wouldn't be so hard 
on him afterwards when he couldn't see a joke. 

General Broadwood was an excellent type of the 
self-possessed soldier. Tall, lithe, with the lean face 
of a man in perfect condition, he never lost his poise. 
It was no pleasant thing for a British General, especi- 
ally in the Boer war, to give the order to retire. And 
yet he gave it on that day outside Yredef ort in exactly 
the same quiet tones which I heard him use towards 
the close of our first day's fight with De Wet, when 
he pointed to a nearby ridge and directed an officer 
to find out if it was occupied by the enemy. And the 
officer led his twenty men up to it at a gallop. It was 
clear, I was glad to see ; for if it hadn't been, not 
many of the twenty would have come back. 



CHAPTER XYII. 

xIt Bay at Yredefort. 

De Wet, contrary to the firm belief entertained at 
headquarters at Pretoria, made no attempt to cross 
the Yaal; and for twelve days General Broadwood 
held his position near Vredefort, waiting patiently 
for the reinforcements he had asked for. For the 
first few days officers and men worked hard, making- 
the position secure and closing so far as was possible 
every outlet through which the enemy might break 
away to the south again. His first act was to draw 
around De Wet's position a thin line of khaki all of 
fourteen miles long. It was not overstrong ; but the 
enemy did not once dare to cross it, though he made 
several half-hearted attemx3ts, only to lose courage in 
the end. Kno^ving- how strong the enemy was, there 
was not a night during that anxious fortnight that we 
did not turn in fully prepared to be aroused before 
davni to meet an attack which the officers felt might 
come at any moment. And we constantly wondered 
why De Wet did not hurl most of his force against 
our right flank, as he was amply strong enough to do, 
and, holding that in check, send his convoy off to the 
east towards Parys and Lindeque Drift, where he 
could hoj)e for an easier passage of the river. But 



AT BAY AT ^TIEDEFOKT. 139 

De Wet did none of tlie things that he might have 
done during that first week, and thereby caused Gen- 
eral Ridley and his officers not a little disapiooint- 
ment. General Ridley was in command of the right 
flank, holding, with a thousand mounted infantry and 
half a dozen guns, the weakest part of General Broad- 
wood's long line. But even this would not tempt De 
Wet ; and it began to be evident after a while that 
not until reinforcements arrived could we exjDect the 
stand-up fight that we hoped would settle the busi- 
ness and clear the field of the last force which, in 
Lord Roberts's estimation, prevented the termination 
of the war. 

And everyone was very keen to close with De Wet. 
He had many admirers among General Ridley's offi- 
cers ; and while discussing our dinner before the camj)- 
fire in the chilly evenings we often spoke of how we 
would make a guest of him if we ever had the luck to 
make him prisoner. The British honored him for the 
skill he had displayed in the exciting chase he had led 
us across the Orange River Colony. It was a sj)ectacu- 
lar performance, even when account was taken of the 
fact that De Wet knew every foot of the country, and 
that it was entirely friendly to him. And now, at bay, 
firmly entrenched along the Yaal, he was holding off 
the only force that Lord Roberts so far had been able 
to send against him, absolute master of the situation 
until additional troops could be sent down from the 



140 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

nortli to invest liis iDosition from the rear. That 
achieyement bespoke qualities for which many of" 
those who had fought him before and hoped to fight 
him again honored him as a foeman worthy of their 
steel. 

But meanwhile the officers in our camp near Vrede- 
fort had ample time, notwithstanding the need of 
constant yigilance, for resentment against the author- 
ities for not despatching additional troops with more 
speed. The trouble seemed to be that the intelli- 
gence officers at headquarters, who, as had been 
shown on many occasions, were not always as intelli- 
gent as they might have been, had not been able to 
make up their minds that De Wet would not cross 
the Yaal. Confident that he would, they concluded 
that it would be a waste of energy to send more 
troops on a stern chase, and so devoted their efforts 
to assembling forces in front of him. But by delay- 
ing to reinforce Broadwood they let a golden oppor- 
tunity slip by ; and their original plan, which might 
have redeemed the situation, failed because Lord 
Methuen, who had by that time reached Potchef- 
stroom, to the north of De Wet's position, would not 
move down fast enough or near enough to the Yaal. 

As a matter of fact, it became e^sddent two days 
after De Wet ran to cover there that for the present 
at les^st he would not leave the Free State. Whether 
because his animals were too tired or because his 



AT BAY AT VREDEFORT. 141 

burghers refused to leave tlieir own land, lie let two 
precious days go by. That gave Lord Methueu time 
to reach Potchefstroom ; and if those at headquarters 
had responded at once to General Broadwood's urgent 
call for more troops, it should have been possible to 
get up a strong enough force from the south to en- 
able him to attack. 

Such si3eculations, combined with the strain of 
constantly watching a resourceful foe who was am- 
ply strong enough to dash out and attempt to force 
our weaker line, left the Generals and their staffs 
little time for leisure. To the less hard-worked offi- 
cers, however, and in fact to most of us, the time 
hung heavy on our hands ; and we spent much of the 
day sleeping, or lying lazily in the shade of our tents^ 
reading old books or newspapers or dreaming of voy- 
ages home. Under such circumstances comparatively 
unimiDortant incidents acquire quite an overpowering 
interest. On one afternoon nearly everybody in Gen- 
eral Ridley's camp, where we lay guarding that right 
flank twelve miles away from headquarters, was 
absorbed in watching a duel between two Royal 
Artillery fifteen-pounders, in General Broadwood's 
camp, and two of the Boer guns, evidently Creusots, 
a couple of miles away. The latter were close to- 
gether near a farmhouse, barely discernible through 
glasses, resting among some tall green trees at the 
foot of one of the kopjes which lined the Yaal ; while 



142 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Broad wood's g-uns were cleverly screened below the 
crest of a tiny kopje out in tlie plain. From these 
respective positions the rival gunners amused them- 
selves and us for three hours firings shrapnel at each 
other. 

It w^as the mutter of the far-away guns that first 
called our attention to the fact that something was 
toward. Keyed up as we had been for days in the 
expectation that De Wet might at any moment make 
an attempt against one or another portion of our line, 
we all trooped up to the crest of the rise below which 
our camp was laid out, and, catching sig'ht of the little 
clouds of smoke didfting away from over the invisible 
guns, we settled ourselves comfortably down against 
the ant-hills or stretched out on the ground and 
brought glasses or telescopes or naked eye to bear. 

There was not much to be seen at that distance; 
but such as the spectacle was, it held our closest 
attention for the three hours that the entertainment 
lasted. After a while it became possible to make out 
which puffs were which. Those to the left must be 
from Broadwood's guns, w^e concluded, and those by 
tbe trees from the weapons served by De Wet's Ger- 
man artillerymen. Yery soon we noticed that a few 
moments after the thick cloud of smoke appeared, to 
tell that one gun or another had been fired, a tinier 
puff of lighter smoke would show above the opposite 
position and betray the bursting shell. It all sug- 



AT BAY AT M^EDEFORT. 143 

gested a display of fireworks set off by impatient 
enthusiasts who could not wait until dark, and it 
proved to be quite as harmless. We watched the 
shrapnel bursting in an ominous cloud apparently 
directly in the smoke of Broadwood's guns, and 
looked to hear later of serious casualties; but we 
learned next day that the Boers had not succeeded in 
hitting- even a mule. As Broadwood " helloed " back 
to Ridley in reply to the latter's question, " What's 
going on?" "Nothing going on but gunnery." At 
sunset the gunnery subsided, and we all went back 
to camp. Next day there was more practice, partici- 
pated in by two four-point-seven naval guns which 
had just reached Broadwood. We were satiated 
now, and nobody paid much attention this time ; but 
the Boers had the luck to wound four men. 

Two days later occurred an incident which went to 
show what a part chance plays in the fate of armies. 
Captain Lord Charles Bentinck of the Ninth Lancers, 
General Ridley's Chief of Staff, had ridden out with 
another officer to look over some entrenchments that 
the troops had been throwing up that day. Not 
many hundred yards away from these, and command- 
ing very effectively General Ridley's camp, was a 
slight rise in the veldt, not quite marked enough to 
be worthy of the name of kopje, formed by an out- 
crop of rock and crowned by the crumbling walls of 
an abandoned Kaffir kraal. A Boer gun there would 



144 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

have quickly forced General Ridley to vacate his posi- 
tion. Here liad, of course, been posted a picket. 

As the two officers, quite by chance, trotted up to 
the entrenchments, they suddenly heard the crackling 
of Mausers. A moment later an excited sergeant ran 
up to them from the direction of the firing and re- 
ported that two hundred Boer horsemen had attacked 
the picket and driven it in. " What men are those ?" 
asked Lord Charles when he had silenced the excited 
sergeant, pointing to half a dozen figures that could 
be seen moving about behind the walls of the kraal, a 
few hundred yards away. " Ours, sir ! " was the reply. 
It had hardly been uttered when, " ping ! phutt ! '* 
and a sprinkling of bullets sputtered into the ground 
about the three men. Not far off, huddled in a group, 
stood the score of men composing the picket that 
had been driven in, leaderless, and quite at a loss 
what to do. Lord Charles wasted no time. Sending 
one of the men back for reinforcements, he called to 
the rest to come on, and led them up against the 
kraal, to which the supporting Boers in the plain 
were rapidly drawing near. But he was in time. As 
the rallied picket advanced at the double, the hand- 
ful of Boers already in the kraal cleared out, and as 
they joined their comrades the latter turned their 
horses and also galloped off. Thus it all ended well. 
But if those two hundred Boers had been allowed to 
reach the kraal, they could probably have held it 



AT BAY AT VEEDEFORT. 145 

until a gun was brought up, and then it would have 
gone hard with our camp. 

As a contrast to such strains on our anxiety, an ad- 
venture of General Ridley's on that same afternoon, 
though it just missed being a tragedy, had a happy 
ending that put everybody at headquarters in good 
siDirits. The brigadier, accompanied by a young 
officer of his staff and three orderlies, had left camp 
at about noon to ride the twelve miles to General 
Broadwood's. Five o'clock and sunset came, and 
speedily the veldt was wrapped in African darkness, 
but the General did not return. Instead came a scout 
in from the veldt with the report that four hundred 
Boers had made a descent upon a farm between 
Broadwood's position and ours, past which we knew 
the General would ride on his way back to camp. 
Shortly afterwards two despatch-riders came up with 
a message and reported that they had been attacked 
at this farm and that two of them had been cut off 
and captured, the others escaioing only through the 
fleetness of their horses and good luck in not being 
hit by the bullets sent after them. This naturally in- 
creased the anxiety that we had already begun to 
feel for the brigadier. The Chief of Staff sat down 
to compose a cipher message for heliographing across 
the veldt, asking if the General had started on his re- 
turn ride ; and the rest of us began to speculate on 
the consequences of the capture of such a prize by 

10 



146 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

the enemy. Two patrols had ah^eady been sent out 
with orders to fire on anything they saw in order, the 
reasoning was, that the wanderer might hear, and, if 
lost, locate his own camp ; but they too had as yet 
failed to return. Then, just as we had about made 
up our minds that the worst had probably hap- 
pened, the voice of the lost one was heard, and as 
we jumped to our feet he appeared in person within 
the dim radiance cast by the candles burning under 
the headquarters tent. An audible sigh of relief 
went up. "Did you see the enemy?" and "How 
did you get by ? " were questions hurled at him from 
all sides. And then he told his story, and told it so 
well that we were soon shouting with laughter. 

Just about sunset, as he was passing the farm in 
question, he had noticed a group of some twenty -five 
men in the distance. " I couldn't tell whether they 
were our fellows or Boers, but decided that it would 
be unwise to ride up and ask, and so we just offed it. 
Just as we turned our horses' heads they began shoot- 
ing, and good shooting it was, too. One bullet struck 

between B here, and me. A second hit the ground 

between his horse's feet, and a third and fourth went 
singing over our heads. We were legging it very fast, 
but it was dark by this time, and after sending a few 
more shots after us they stopped firing. I don't know 
what became of one of my orderlies ; he hasn't turned 
up yet. But B and I take a deal of catching." 



AT BAY AT VEEDEFORT. 147 

The Brigadier, merrily telling- of his sensations, 
speedily won his staff to his own mood. The jesting 
was at its height when one of his corps commanders 
came up with a grave face, saluted, and reported that 
one of his patrols had just come in with the news that 
a party of five horsemen had been seen at about sun- 
set. The patrol had fired on them, but without effect ; 
and the horsemen when last seen had been going very 
fast to the eastward. " Yes," replied the Brigadier, 
" we were going rather fast." Then we burst out 
laughing again as the picture rose before us of the 
General, like young Lochinvar, galloping madly out 
of the west, and being fired at by his own patrols. 
Then he took his corps commander aside, for a 
kindly man was the Brigadier, and directed him to 
tell his men that it was all right, and that it had 
given him great satisfaction to note how well they 
shot. The Boers, he said, wouldn't have come half so 
near hitting him. The incident thus closed happily ; 
but it will be a long time before the telling of it 
stops ; and the members of that patrol will, it is safe 
to assume, tell it with bated breath, for it is no light 
matter to shoot your own General. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 
Wolf. 

Thus the days passed, with eyeryone in the British 
camp expecting the enemy at every moment to make 
the attempt to get away, and with j)lans all made to 
meet it ; but each succeeding morning brought us 
proofs that he was still " sitting tight," and each day 
closed without any relative change in our respective 
positions. On the third of August Lord Kitchener 
arrived at General Broadwood's camp and took over 
the command, and we began to hope that his presence 
would be the signal for greater activity on Lord 
Methuen's part and would result in the hurrying up 
of reinforcements from the south. Colonel Little and 
General Hart's brigade did join us, Colonel Otter and 
his Canadians were marching in from the railway, and 
Lord Kitchener sent over to General Bidley one of the 
lately arrived four-point-seven naval guns of Lady- 
smith fame ; but the movements were still exasperat- 
ingly slow, and we stayed where we were for several 
days longer, maintaining the same unceasing watch- 
fulness over the enemy's position, and sending occa- 
sional convoys back to the railway to keep us sup- 
plied with food and forage. 

After a week, however, signs began to multiply that 



WOLF. 149 

our camp, which was not in an especially favored po- 
sition, was becoming nnhealthful, and General Rid- 
ley began to talk of shifting ground. With the pass- 
ing away of the rigorous part of winter had come the 
first of the rains. On two nights it poured down in 
torrents, and we had had to forego dinner and take 
such shelter as we could find under canvas. To keep 
dry was a hard enough task for men, and an impos- 
sible one for beasts, which, of course, had no shelter 
at all. Result : dead mules. And dead mules to 
windward soon become disagreeable, and finally 
unbearable. 

My own horses had so far, such had been my good 
fortune, survived both wet and cold, as well as the 
hard days of heavy trekking. But they, too, began 
to show signs of distress after the worst night : all, 
that is, but Wolf. Every experience of the campaign 
had given Wolf new opportunities to show how day 
by day he stored up wisdom to enable himself to meet 
the developments of the future. Wolf was a diminu- 
tive beast, somewhat stunted and clumsy of build, one 
would say ; bay in color, with bare spots on his with- 
ers and hocks, and in the middle of his sturdy back, 
where the harness had chafed him. But even as 
Tommy Atkins, under his stained and ragged khaki, 
was like a Toledo blade of tempered steel in a rusty, 
tattered scabbard, so beneath Wolf's scarred skin 
beat a brave and faithful heart. The keen observer 



150 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

would read the proofs in his beautifully shaped head 
and limbs, and in the poise of his body. But plain to 
all was it in the way he held up his head and stumpy 
tail, and pricked up his ears when you came up to 
greet him, or put his nose in your hand to search for 
oats. Wolf never drooped his head. 

At the end of a long day's march, which he had 
spent in doing more than his share of work in xDuUing 
half a ton over all sorts of country, he did not lose 
interest in what was going on, nor fail to take note 
of the jDlace where some native boy had hidden a bag 
of oats or a pail of mealies. And he never resented 
your caresses, though he took them very calmly, as 
if they were a foolish tribute to a horse that had only 
done his duty. And not only did Wolf do his duty 
manfully, modestly, and to the uttermost of his faith- 
ful soul, but he never neglected to show his com- 
panion on the other side of the desselboom the way 
that he should go. Many companions had he had, 
for I never found one who could stand up beside him 
for A^ery long ; but he tackled each new-comer with 
the same good-natured patience, and made a wiser 
horse of him before the latter gave out. At Wolve- 
hoek, where I secured rail transport to Heilbron on 
my waj^ to join Lord Methuen, Wolf showed the way 
into the box-car to five other horses and mules that 
for an hour had resisted blandishments and threats 
alike of an army of blacks and Tommies, distracted 



WOLF. ' 151 

railway officials, and desperate drivers. In an in- 
spired moment we led Wolf up to the open door, 
while the other animals drew back at gaze. Wolf 
sniffed into the car, saw other horses standing inside 
in peace and comfort, made a final examination of the 
entrance, and leaped in. The others, led up, followed 
him without a protest, and as if ashamed. And at 
the end of that jolting journey, which had given most 
of us mere men all we could do to keep from being 
hurled out ; Wolf, when his door was opened, jumped 
nimbly down to earth again and surveyed his new 
surroundings with the keenest interest, displayed in 
his pricked-u^D ears and arched neck. When turned 
out to graze, Wolf was always coupled to the least 
tractable of my other animals. He never failed to 
keep him near the herd, where the veldt grass was 
richest, and always brought him back safe to his peg- 
rope by the cart (and the oats) at evening. 

My black boy Lewis stuck his head into my tent 
one evening as we lay outside Vredefort, and as he 
laid away some clothes he had been washing, with a 
warning that they would get dusty if left outside in the 
wind, he said: "Wolf been away all day, sir. I look 
for him all over er veldt, sir. He slip his halter and 
go away, and I not find him. Den I come back wid 
er odder horses, and dere he is by er cart, eatin' 
mealies he fin' in er bag." And he wound up his tale 
with a chuckle. Wolf had no more appreciative ad- 



152 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

mirer tlian Lewis. Haying been originally a Boer 
pony before lie was duly enrolled in the Kimberley 
Mounted Corps, he did not know much kindness in 
his early youth. Now he accepted it as he accepted 
everything else : as something all in the day's work, 
but that must not be allowed to interfere with his 
duty. I think he was grateful in his own superior 
way ; but it pained me to realize that when it was all 
oyer he would not be half so sorry to change masters 
as I should be to part with him. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The Boer on his Own Heath. 

Such incidents as these which marked those days 
on the Yaal, and the encounters we had had with 
De Wet since leaving Bethlehem, had served to bring- 
out most of the points which characterize the Boer. 
Among other opinions more or less sincerely held, 
outside of Africa, concerning the Boers, is the oiDin- 
ion that they are a sturdy, simple, generally worthy 
if not noble race ; in short, that they are still what 
they were when they emigrated from Holland, that 
cradle of so many heroes and dauntless pioneers ; or 
what they were even later, at the time of the Great 
Trek, when they went forth into the wilderness to 
conquer for themselves peace, prosperity, and hai^py 
homes. But those who cling to this opinion have 
failed to take account of the influences that have been 
at work upon the Boer character during the last two 
generations. 

These influences have been both climatic and social. 
There is something particularly insidious about life 
in the wilder portions of South Africa. If man is 
content with little, he may obtain it at the price of 
comparatively little labor. When the Boers first 
penetrated into the wilderness of the high veldt, 



154 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

wliicli later became the territories of the Orange Free 
State and the Transvaal, they found a country teem- 
ing with game of many varieties, and possessing a 
soil of singular fertility, which responded generously 
to the simplest forms of cultivation. By the simple 
process of throwing a dam across a stream, the Boer 
voortrekker found that he could preserve a supply of 
water which would outlast the dry season of winter ; 
and the veldt, without any care at all, provided sus- 
tenance amply sufficient for his flocks and herds. 
Thus nature herself, with but the slightest propitia- 
tion, offered enough to keep body and soul together, 
an object which a singularly bracing and healthful 
climate reduced to still less of a strug-o-le. 

But nature went no further than to provide of it- 
self for the humblest wants. If man desired to live 
on a higher plane, if he craved even the comforts of 
life as they are understood in older countries, he must 
work for it as he had to work for it in Australia, or in 
innumerable portions of the western United States, 
or, to go back further still, in the far less genial sur- 
roundings that the Puritan emigrants transformed 
into the New England of to-day. And so it hapi3ened, 
very early in the national existence of the Boers, that 
they were faced with the alternatives of accepting 
practically as a free gift the plain fare and rude 
shelter which sufficed to satisfy the humblest wants, 
or of aiming at a worthier level of existence, and, by 



THE BOER OX HIS OWN HEATH. 155 

exercising those higlier qualities wliicli distinguisli 
man from brute beasts, winning for themselves the 
possessions which are the reward of hard and honest 
toil almost the world over. 

In seeking to explain why the Boer, sprung from a 
race that has accomplished so much that is worth 
doing, and that has left so many inspiring examples 
of daring and success in every field of human endea- 
vor, should have been content to choose the former 
of the alternatives outlined above, one must take note 
of many circumstances. All about him the Boer 
found food in the form of vast herds of game, so 
primitive as neA^er to think of running away from a 
man with a rifle, and procurable in any quantity for 
the mere cost of powder and shot. Again, before 
their ancient virility and strength of character had 
been impaired, they found it comparatively easy to 
subdue the various native tribes whom they found in 
possession of the lands they trekked to ; and thus, in 
a primeval country, where the conquered were always 
slaves, they obtained labor in abundance, which could 
be put to use for no more trouble than the wielding 
of a sjambok. And, as another subtle invitation to 
sloth, the vastness of the new country they had 
found their way into led them to scatter widely apart 
in small communities, a circumstance which in its 
turn reduced the demand for labor to the small 
amount necessary to supx3ly the simple needs of 



156 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

isolated families, each sufficient to itself, and main- 
taining only the most casual relations with the others, 
the nearest of which was often several days' journey 
away across the trackless yeldt. Thus the tendency 
inevitably was, after the natives in the surrounding- 
district had been subjugated, for the Boer to with- 
draw himself with his family to some isolated spot 
which he could call his own, and there settle down 
to a pastoral life, which was rarely interrupted by the 
visit of a traveller, and into which the demands of 
neighborliness entered but little if at all. The Eng- 
lishman w^ho fares forth to seek his fortune in the 
colonies, cherishes almost invariably the purpose to 
return when he has met with success, and enjoy the 
fruits of his industry at home. The Boer had no 
such incentive to accumulate w^ealth. His hut on the 
veldt was all the home he wanted ; in those early days 
w^ealth meant nothing to him, for there were no 
markets about him that offered him anything to 
buy. 

In some respects this would doubtless appear to 
be an ideal life. It is what many schools of thought 
have sought to persuade us is the life that offers the 
highest form of peace and ha^Dpiness realizable here 
below. But there is a flaw in the theory somewhere, 
if the exxDerience of the Boers counts for anything. 

Their early history will show that the Boers did 
not yield at once to the enervating allurements of th e 



THE BOER ON HIS OWN HEATH. 157 

sweetness of doiug* nothing. Tlie fine, firm fibre which 
they inherited from their forefathers at first resisted 
the influences of decay, as is shown in the records of 
such men as Brand, early President of the Orange 
Free State, and Pretorius, after whom Pretoria is 
named, both of whom left little undone in the at- 
tempt to weld the Boers into a nation. Even as 
recently as the period of the present war a goodly 
number of the Boers of the Free State, and a few of 
the Transvaal, have shown that they have not lost all 
their mettle : Christian De Wet, Prinsloo, and Botha 
are, as was also the venerated Joubert, not lacking 
in most of the fine qualities that were once national 
and not merely individual characteristics. But the 
Boers as a whole, especially those of the Transvaal, 
and most markedly under the regime of Paul Krue- 
ger, have become hopelessly degenerate. Declining 
to accept nature's friendly challenge to a trial of wits 
and strength, which might have served to keep the 
edge on their faculties, they have proved unable to 
withstand the contact with the black races ; misce- 
genation has sapped their physical powers ; leprosy 
has set its awful brand on many families ; the discov- 
ery of gold has helped to corrupt their morals ; and 
finally, political ambition, coming after they had as 
a nation lost the force to govern it or to achieve it,, 
has hurried on a ruin which, inevitable, and, by the 
stern laws of nature, just though it is, is none the 



158 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

less pitiful to. contemplate when one recalls what the 
race once was. 

No one can have failed to note that there is a great 
difference of opinion (outside of Africa) as to the 
Boers ; their characteristics, their habits, their rights 
and ^rrongs, even as to their actual deeds in certain 
battles and certain negotiations. One noteworthy- 
thing about this difference of opinion is that it in- 
creases in direct ratio to the distance of the disput- 
ants from South Africa. There, among those Eng- 
lishmen and Americans who have lived with the Boer 
on his own heath, who have done business with him, 
who know from actual experience what his laws are, 
and who have fought against him — among these, 
who are certainly the best informed, there are hardly 
two opinions. The pro-Boer sentiment which exists, 
or did exist (for it is already subsiding), outside of 
South Africa — ignoring, of course, those individuals 
who are pro-Boers by contract with Oom Paul, or 
for other reasons equally unsentimental and insin- 
cere — it was early possible to trace to one of three 
general causes : consanguinity, which moved the 
Dutch in Holland and elsewdiere ; dislike of England, 
which influenced numbers of European States and 
communities, and a small element of the American 
people ; and misinformation, of the sort which Oom 
Paul and his agents have always been such adepts 
at disseminating, and which created an honest be- 



THE BOER ON HIS OWN HEATH. 159 

lief in many generous hearts that the Boer govern- 
ments were republics fashioned after Washington's 
high type ; that the Boers themselves, valiant, holy, 
and heroic stalwarts, were worthy successors of Crom- 
well's Ironsides ; and that the iDresent war was forced 
upon them by England in the determination to satisfy 
rapacious greed for land and gold. 

It is unnecessary to do more than refer to the 
sympathy for the Boers which is founded upon con- 
sanguinity and upon Anglophobia. The former modi- 
fied itself perceptibly upon closer acquaintance by 
the cleanly and ui^right subjects of Queen Wilhelmina 
with the corporeal presence of Oom Paul ; and the 
latter will continue to be lavished until some other 
pigmy rises up and announces his purpose to drive 
the English into the sea. But the pro-Boer senti- 
ment which is founded upon misinformation is honest 
in the main, and therefore merits some attention. 

Contributing to this sentiment is belief in the fic- 
tion that Paul Krueger was the President of a 
Republic, as the term is understood in the United 
States, in fact as well as in name. For proofs irre- 
futable that the so-called South African Republic 
was an oligarchy ruled by a clique which in its turn 
was dominated by Krueger, who had found seventeen 
years as Chief Executive ample time in which to 
arrogate to himself despotic power, the seeker after 
light cannot do better than turn to a book called 



160 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

" Tlie Transvaal from Within," written by a gentle- 
man who liyed for many years among the Boers. 
Therein is set forth the evidence of facts, supported 
by authentic documents, which reveal the full meas- 
ure of the autocratic power wielded by Oom Paul, 
the corrupt methods whereby he wrung from those 
who desired to do business in his country the sums 
which went to make up his present handsome fortune, 
and the way he used his wealth and his power to 
further bis own ends. Oom Paul undoubtedly loved 
his burghers after a fashion, and had many excellent 
qualities ; but honesty, to say nothing of candor, was 
not one of them, and neither, most assuredly, was hu- 
mility, of the kind which the Boers read about in 
their pocket Bibles. He had a strange prejudice 
against allowing his burghers to acquire much gen- 
eral knowledge ; and his patriotism took the not lofty 
form of a belief that what was best for him was best 
for his country. The Transvaal was not a republic ; 
and Oom Paul was simply a shrewd and obstinate 
old man, with a great deal of ambition and covetous- 
ness and not quite so much good sense. 

As to the causes of the war, every person of in- 
formation in South Africa knows, and not even the 
Dutch of Cape Colony have thought it worth while 
to deny, that the war was England's answer to the 
announced determination of the Boers, and the Dutch 
generally, to drive the British into the sea. Before 



THE BOEE OX HIS OTN^' HEATH. 161 

the real facts of the ante-helium situation began to 
transpire, it was a iDopular impression, in England as 
well as in the United States, that inability to agree 
upon the manner of granting the franchise to the 
Uitlanders was the chief cause of the war. Lord 
Salisbury's goyernment made no serious effort to 
counteract that impression. But, as a matter of fact, 
the franchise dis^Dute was the most trifling of side 
issues. A member of Parliament whom I met at the 
front, in the uniform of an officer of the staff, put it 
even more strongly than that. He had sought a com- 
mission in the army with the object of gaining in- 
formation in the field which he could not have 
obtained at home. He told me that he had been one 
of a group of Conservative members who had on a 
certain occasion presented a memorial to the Premier, 
begging that the franchise question might not be 
allowed to lead to war. " I came out here," he added, 
" to find that the franchise question had nothing to 
do with the war." 

But a few facts about this franchise disj)ute will 
not come in amiss. Much has been made in some 
quarters of the alleged fairness of Krueger's fran- 
chise proposals ; and it used to be charged that Sec- 
retary Chamberlain split hairs with him in a way that 
revealed his own determination to force a war. As 
a matter of fact, there was nothing fair about the 

wily Boer's proposals ; he merely acted upon his 

11 



162 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

favorite policy of trying to get something for nothing, 
one of his methods being a display of that slimness 
which consists in xDersnading your neighbor that yon 
are telling the truth when you're not, and that you 
will keep your word when you engage it. Oom Paul 
did say that after a residence of a certain compara- 
tively brief number of years in the Transvaal, the 
Uitlander might be held to have satisfied one of the 
conditions of admission to citizenship. But he took 
pains so to hedge this apparent concession about as 
to render it of no value whatever. No Uitlander's 
claims to citizenship were to be considered even after 
the condition of residence had been fulfilled until a 
majority of the man's Boer neighbors had united in 
a recommendation that he be granted the franchise. 
Such a recommendation, the difficulty of obtaining 
which in a hostile community need not be dwelt upon, 
would bring the Uitlander's case before the Yolks- 
raad, or Congress, which in its turn would pass an 
independent and presumably equally partial verdict 
upon the candidate's qualifications. And, finally, the 
grant, even if confirmed by the Volksraad, was still 
to be invalid unless the Executive Council, in which 
Krueger's word was law, approved. And from that 
final decision there could be no appeal. Such was 
the nature of the " concessions " in praise of which 
I have heard some pro-Boers argue themselves quite 
out of patience. 



THE BOER ON HIS OWN HEATH. 163 

No ; the war was the inevitable result of the Dutch 
conspiracy, which had for many years been taking 
shape, to strip England of her South African colonies 
and make South Africa Dutch from the Zambesi to 
the Cape. Audacious as it seems, it was a conspiracy 
that might have succeeded ; many colonials have told 
me that it undoubtedly would have succeeded had the 
Home Government trifled much longer with the feel- 
ings of the colonials, and had Krueger had a few 
months more in which to complete his plans. In 
that contingency, they told me, the Dutch in Cape 
Colony would have risen to a man ; and many Eng- 
lishmen, in despair of getting a hearing at home, 
would have joined them to welcome the Boer com- 
mandoes to Cape Town. But that far-seeing states- 
man, Sir Alfred Milner, of whom it will in time be 
written that the British Empire owes him much, and 
South Africa everything, read the true meaning of 
this heavy importation of piano-cases into the Trans- 
vaal, which he traced back to a period long antedat- 
ing the blundering Jameson raid, fathomed the pur- 
poses of the Afrikander Bond, Krueger's formidable 
ally in CajDe Colony and Natal, and warned the Gov- 
ernment at home in time. That first army corps was 
despatched to South Africa ; and Krueger, finding the 
cat out of the bag, perforce declared war, and started 
his burghers across his frontiers towards the sea, too 
soon to suit his full purpose, but with better chances 



164 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

than if lie had waited until the Army Corps arrived. 
How his levies failed to get there is now history, the 
details of which will make it eventually clear that two 
reasons for their failure were bad strategy in sitting 
down before Ladysmith, and Kimberley, and Mafek- 
ing, and lack of sufficient courage and dash to press 
home their attacks against any of these towns, which 
depended for their defence hardly at all upon natural 
position but almost entirely upon the indomitable 
spirit of the officers and men behind the guns. Even 
thus early in the war did the Boers prove their lack 
of stomach for assaults, or for any manoeuvres which 
exposed them to fire in the open. 

Many people have doubtless wondered how it was 
that the Boers committed the folly of matching them- 
selves against a power of England's resources, and 
much has been made of the resolution necessary to 
send a people numbering forty thousand fighting 
men against a nation that could put 200,000 in the 
field. The explanation does not properly recall the 
courage of David going forth against Goliath. As a 
matter of fact, the majority of the Boers, who, it must 
be remembered, are an extremely ignorant and ill- 
informed people in the mass, had no idea that Eng- 
land could send such an army to South Africa and 
keep it there. Long before the war broke out, the 
emissaries of Krueger and Steyn began their cam- 
paign of cajolery. England, they told the credulous 



THE BOER ON HIS OWN HEATH. 165 

burghers, could not possibly, such was her situation 
as regarded the rest of the world, send more than 
70,000 men against the innumerable points that the 
Boers could hold. Many Free Staters took uip arms, 
so they have told me themselves, in the firm belief 
that 20,000 men were the maximum force they would 
have to oppose ; and that the Dutch would at once 
rise in Cape Colony and clear the way for the Boer 
armies to Cape Town. Not even much moral cour- 
age is required to undertake an invasion so simple 
as that. And yet while Krueger thus deceived his 
burghers into beginning the war, and cajoled them 
with more lies into keeping at it long after they had 
nothing left to fight for, he allowed himself in turn 
to be deceived by the Bond agents, who assured him 
that the Dutch in Cape Colony were ready to take 
up arms for him ; and by Dr. Leyds, able chief of that 
marvelous subornation factory in Brussels, who con- 
vinced Krueger that most of the powers in Europe 
would leap to his assistance so soon as he should 
have won a few successes. 

This habit of lying dominates the Boer's national 
and private life. He has no sense of honor as we 
understand it. To him a lie is not a cowardly thing, 
but a legitimate means of trying to get the better of 
the other fellow. Men who have done business with 
him will tell you how foolish it is to trust the average 
Boer. And in warfare most of them practise these 



166 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

same qualities of slimness, as they call it. The Eng- 
lish at the front have, as a rule, glossed over the 
incidents illustrative of this fact : it is a quality of 
the race to be generous to a foe, and I heard few 
complaints among officers or men of the British army 
against the abuse of the white and Red Cross flags, for 
instance, while several have sought to explain it on 
the ground that the men who shot from under it 
didn't see it raised by their comrades. But a neutral 
is not bound by any such delicacy of feeling. Time 
and again the Boers, sometimes on the field of battle, 
but more often from behind the walls of an isolated 
farmhouse, did what men of courage in our sense of 
the word would never do : raised the white flag for 
the deliberate purpose of getting their enemy to ex- 
pose himself to one more volley before the Boers ran 
away. 

Not all, perhaps not half, the Boers would resort 
to such treachery. But whereas the white flag was 
thus used fifty times among the forty thousand Boers 
who took up arms, it was not once abused among 
Lord Boberts's two hundred thousand. 

Another cowardly trick sanctioned even by De 
Wet, chivalrous foe as he showed himself in most 
respects to be, was the dressing by Boers in British 
khaki and helmets, and using the disguise to surprise 
an unsuspecting picket or to entice small scouting 
parties within easier rifle range. This, too, was con- 



THE BOER ON HIS OWN HEATH. 167 

sidered only slim, A Boer farmer came into General 
Ridley's camp on tlie Yaal one morning. As lie pro- 
duced a pass and a guarantee that he had taken the 
oath of neutrality, he was treated courteously and 
invited to share with us our bully beef, cold duck, 
hard tack, and whiskey. Among other things, we 
asked him if he approved of this Boer habit of wear- 
ing the British uniform in the field. He thought it 
was all right, he said. And this man was a typical 
Boer, as far as my experience has gone. I have seen 
others cleaner and less unpleasant to look upon, but 
he was of the prevailing type : in habits and in morals 
uncouth, unkempt, and unclean. He was tall and 
well-built, with an uncared-for, reddish beard, and 
small, shifty, close-set, dark eyes. He wore a collar- 
less linen shirt, which he had evidently not taken off 
for some weeks. His outside garments were a coat 
and trousers of dingy tweed. He came into camp 
ostensibly to complain of the driving off of some of 
his sheep by General Eidley's troops. But his hands 
trembled so as he used them at the meal; he had 
such poor control of his voice ; and his demeanor 
generally was so much the opposite of frank, that 
General Bidley sized him u]3 for what he undoubtedly 
was, a spy, put him under guard, and when the next 
convoy left camp, sent him to the railway consigned 
to Cape Town. 

So much information had been obtained in this 



168 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

fashion by Boer spies wlio produced evidences of 
being honorable men that General Kidley, holding 
the weakest portion of General Broadwood's thin line 
against twice his number of Boers, proposed to take 
no such chances, and with all the cheerfulness in the 
world sent down in a similar manner every Boer, 
pass or no pass, who came into the camp. No charge 
was ever filed against them; they were simply left to 
understand that the British had lost some of their 
early simplicity and had learned something of Boer 
traits. Once satisfied from the man's looks that he 
was a spy, any excuse, or none at all, served for 
making the Boer a prisoner of war. 

On another occasion an ill-favored farmer came 
strolling up to headquarters, asking for the General, 
to complain about some stolen sheep. This was a 
favorite method of sj)ies for getting past the out- 
posts. As General Ridley put it, in telling us of this 
particular case, " Their excuse for coming is that 368 
sheep have been stolen by my scouts. The number 
heretofore has never varied : it has always been 368. 
But this man's figure was 72. A Boer who is fool 
enough to say 72 when he might just as truthfully 
say 368 should not in his own interests be left at 
large." If other British Generals had acted with 
that same cheery firmness which distinguished this 
Brigadier, fewer convoys would have been ambushed 



THE BOEK ON HIS OWN HEATH. 169 

and fewer " regrettable incidents " would liave been 
clironicled in the London papers. 

It is also just as well, in tlie interests of truth, to 
state that the Boers as a people are no longer dis- 
tinguished for bravery. Decay has sax3ped their 
valor together with the rest of their ancient virtue. 
Most observant people must have noticed that their 
tactics do not call for much courage. They shoot 
from behind almost perfect cover, and the moment 
the imperviousness of that cover is threatened, they 
are off to fight another day. They display dash only 
in running away. They did not run quite so soon 
during the early campaigns in Natal ; they had a 
better country to defend, and their opinion of the 
quality of the British soldier, as a result of Glad- 
stone's scuttle policy after Majuba and of the pitiful 
collapse of the Johannesburg Reform Committee's 
plans, was not what it now is. But they stood up 
against Lord Roberts nowhere between Paardeburg 
and Pretoria, abandoned the latter stronghold almost 
without a struggle, and in fact since Cronje surren- 
dered attacked only when strong in the ratio of ten to 
one, and made a defense only from positions which it 
was an absolute impossibility for the force opposed to 
them to carry. Organized resistance to the conquest 
of the Free State and the Transvaal ended with 
Paardeburg. Since then the Transvaalers, the most 
decadent of all the Boers, have done practically no 



170 THE GHASE OF DE WET. 

fighting at all ; and what success has been achieved 
in the way of harassing Lord Koberts's flanks and 
rear has been accomplished by De Wet and his Free 
Staters. 

It would be unfair to say or to let it be inferred 
that the Boers are a race of cowards. Cowardice in 
men is one of the rarest of human faults. But the 
Boers are by no means the Paladins that some people 
would have us believe ; and man to man, and by the 
test of battle, they are far below the level of Tommy 
Atkins. " Then how is it," many people will exclaim, 
"that the Boers inflicted such heavy losses on the 
British, and made such a showing early in the war ?" 
The reason is two-fold : the Boers never fought save 
with an overwhelming advantage of position ; and 
they had for some of their best allies in many of 
those earlier battles of the war a number of British 
officers who were less fit to command men in battle 
than they were to wield the long whip of a Kaffir 
bullock-driver. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

The Lessons of the Chase. ^ 

Ou Sunday, August 5, by which time our patience 
was almost exhausted, Lord Kitchener decided that 
the time was at last ripe for closing in on De Wet ; 
and that morning, by his orders. General Ridley sent 
Colonels Legge and De Lisle to the northeast to join 
the Canadians on Wildehonde Kop and to get in 
touch with General Knox, who had on the previous 
evening driven a small party of Boers off Groot Ei- 
land Kop and occupied that important position, wdiich 
commanded the Yaal for several miles and also dom- 
inated the towns of Yredefort and Parys. Meanwhile, 
General Broadwood had seized Rhebokfontein with- 
out opposition, incidentally capturing five of the en- 
emy's wagons. Early on Monday morning General 
Bidley also struck camp with the remainder of his 
force ; and towards noon we joined Legge and De 
Lisle, and took up a fine position between and around 
Wildehonde and Groot Eiland Kops. From the lat- 
ter both Yredefort and Parys were plainly visible, 
and the scene below us was picturesque to a degree. 
The Yaal, winding between thickly-wooded banks, lay 
below us ; and beyond it, and also on the hither side 
towards Yredefort, rose stately peaks and mountains, 



172 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

Tvitli one gorge wliicli they sheltered, leading to the 
Boer position, plainly risible, and also another from 
which the gleaming river issued on its way to the dis- 
tant sea. The road which the Boers wonld hare to 
follow if they attempted to escape to the eastward 
lay below under oiu' guns ; and a splendid view of a 
laro-e extent of country which we all felt mio'ht be- 
come a battlefield was to be obtained from Groot 
Eiland's commanding summit. 

General Bidley chose for his headquarters a site at 
the foot of Wildehonde Kop, a stony eminence dotted 
with cedars, with plenty of good water near by : a spot 
in every way superior to that wherein we had sj)ent 
the previous weary fortnight. Here we prepared to 
settle down for another week, until the arrival of Gen- 
erals Paget and Clements, who were due at Ki'oonstad 
on the 11th, should enable Lord Kitchener to tighten 
his grip still further. 

But DeWet was not the man to sit quietly down and 
suffer himself to be surrounded. TThile we had been 
waiting, inactive, for the coming of our slow-moving 
reinforcements, the Boer had replaced his worn-out 
animals and reprovisioned his force with supi3lies 
gleaned from the surrounding countiy ; and by the 
time we moved up and closed his last outlet to the 
south of the Yaal, he was ready to resume his march 
forward. By this time Lord Methuen should have 
been able on his part to close all means of egress to 



THE LESSONS OF THE CHASE. 173 

tlie nortli. But for reasons which yet remain to be 
explained, he had never moved his force down quite 
close enough to the Yaal. De Wet found two drifts, 
De Wet's and Schueman's, capable of being forced 
with a little strategy ; and on the night of August 6 
he made a feint at one and, taking his whole force 
across the other, got safely around Lord Methuen's 
front. Heavy and regular firing, which began at 
dawn on the 7tli and lasted until two o'clock in the 
afternoon, gave us in General Ridley's camp our first 
intimation that all the good work that he and General 
Broadwood had accomplished was undone. Later we 
learned that the whole Boer force had got safely away, 
the firing we had heard being between Methuen and 
De Wet's rear guard, and accomplishing nothing, and 
that the enemy was now trekking fast to the eastward 
along the north bank of the Yaal, whether with the pur- 
pose of turning south and recrossing at Lindeque's or 
Yiljoen's Drift into the Orange Biver Colony or of go- 
ing northwards towards Johannesburg and Pretoria, 
no one knew. Towards dusk, however, one of General 
Bidley's officers returned from a scouting expedition 
and reported the main force of the enemy at Buffels- 
hoek, between Potchefstroom and Parys. That indi- 
cated that he had chosen the former course, and also 
removed the last doubts that he had got clean away. 
It would be only tiresome to go at length into the 
story of the resumption of the chase by Lord Kit- 



174 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

cliener. The latter vowed to catch De Wet this time 
if he had to kill every mule in the British forces, and 
he started off on the trail again at a iDace which looked 
ominous for the mules. At noon on Thursday the 
force reached Lindeque's Drift in time to frustrate 
any attempt on the part of the Boers to recross there. 
But they had no intention of doing so. That after- 
noon I climbed to the toxD of a high kop with General 
Ridley and his staff and signallers, and thence for 
over three hours we watched the whole Boer force 
trekking off to the northward, safely out of range, 
while Lord Methuen dropped ineffectual shells into 
his rear guard. 

Next morning I crossed the Yaal for the third time ; 
and then followed two days of hard marching up to 
and across the Gatsrand to the railway at Welver- 
diend, between Potchefstroom and Johannesburg. 
Lord Methuen, some ten miles to our left, managed 
to keep in touch with the enemy's rear-guard for 
most of the time, but Lord Kitchener's immediate 
force didn't have a chance to fire a gun. De Wet 
kept his lead, and a few days later joined Delarey 
not far from Johannesburg. By this time most of 
Lord Kitchener's mules were dead ; but De Wet was 
still at large, and possessed of renewed resources 
that enabled him to go on roaming at will over South 
Africa, cutting lines of communication, swooping 
down on detached forces and posts, and generally 



THE LESSONS OF THE CHASE. 175 

conducting the most spectacular guerrilla warfare that 
modern times have seen. The chase had ended in a 
fizzle. 

But it had not been without its lessons. In a 
month, with a force which was originally 1,500, and 
which swelled to 3,000, with a dozen guns and a con- 
voy of over a hundred bullock-wagons and Cape 
carts, forming a column several miles long, De AVet 
had marched 250 miles across country, from the 
Basutoland border, across the Yaal, and nearly to 
Pretoria. With two of the keenest of the British 
generals on his heels tliroughout the march, and with 
Lord Kitchener himself directing the last iDart of 
the chase, he kept his lead until he was weary, and 
held his pursuers at bay for two weeks while he 
rested in the hills along the Yaal; successfully 
threaded his way among several large bodies of 
troops on the lookout for him, crossed Lord Boberts's 
lines of communication twice, cutting them in both 
cases, captured two train -loads of soldiers and sup- 
plies, and finally joined Delarey in the Transvaal 250 
miles from his starting point. 

This extraordinary march of De Wet's tells in 
miniature the story of all the British disasters in this 
war. Perhaps no other single incident reveals so 
clearly the handicaps under which the army in South 
Africa worked from the first. De Wet should not 
have achieved this brilliant success. Making every 



176 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

allowance for his own resourcefulness, wliicli was 
remarkable, and for his knowledge of the country, 
which was perfect, the fact remains that his march 
was not so much a credit to his own unusual ability 
as a reflection upon the incapacity of a few of the 
British generals still in the field. 

It is perhaps natural in Europe and America, where 
at best but an imperfect idea of the conditions in 
South Africa may be formed, that in seeking to ex- 
plain the disasters of the British, the Boers should 
be credited with extraordinary fighting abilities. It 
is doubtless some consolation for the English and for 
those who sympathize with them to think that when 
they have failed to press their attacks home or have 
been outgeneralled or baffled it is because they have 
faced an always worthy foeman, who fought with 
splendid valor, born of ardent, if misguided patriot- 
ism. But in such reflections one only deludes him- 
self. Indulging in them, one fails to do justice to the 
unconquerable heroism of the rank and file of Lord 
Boberts's army, and one is more than generous to 
the Boers. The story of every battle, every skirmish, 
of this war will show that the Boers are not brave in 
the soldier's sense of the word ; are skillful in a mili- 
tary sense only in their remarkable aptitude for 
taking advantage of the blunders of their opponents, 
which have been, verily, most generously distributed. 
The Boer fights determinedly only when in greatly 



THE LESSONS OF THE CHASE. 177 

superior force, when seeking to extricate himself 
from a desperate situation, or when snugly entrenched 
behind well-nigh perfect cover, which he knows so 
well how to find. The Boer always has one eye on 
his line of retreat, and he is on his pony and away 
the moment his inability to hold his position becomes, 
not necessarily certain, but sim]3ly possible. He sells 
his life dearly only when cornered, wherein he is no 
braver than the most timid of animals. It may be 
exaggeration to say, as many have said, that every 
British disaster in the war may be traced to the in- 
competency of some British commander. But it is 
true beyond question that many disasters may be 
traced to that source ; and it is equally true that 
many victories, won in spite of bad generalship, 
would have been disasters if Tommy Atkins were not 
the well-nigh unconquerable and incomparable fighter 
that he is. 

The record of Lord Roberts's advance to Pretoria 
is evidence enough on these points. The Boers 
scattered before his columns like chaff before the 
wind. Earlier successes against other commanders, 
and De Wet's achievements since impregnable Pre- 
toria fell practically without a struggle, were made 
possible by blunders which Lord Roberts, or Sir 
Archibald Hunter, or any other able General, would 
not have made. But so extensive was the hostile 
territory in South Africa that had to be covered to 

12 



178 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

be made secure against constant raids by an extra- 
ordinarily mobile enemy, tliat two conditions in- 
creasing- tlie possibility of disaster were created : a 
force even two hundred thousand strong- had to be di- 
vided up, after the main campaign conducted by Lord 
Roberts was over, into innumerable comparatively 
small bodies ; and every commander had to trust a 
part of his effective force to some incompetent sub- 
ordinate. Hunter had his Hart and his Barton and 
his Paget ; BuUer, and after him Kitchener, had his 
Methuen. And one might add many others to the 
list. 

Christian De Wet should not have got away 
through Slabbert's Nek jDractically scatheless, as he 
did. The blame for his escape is to be divided be- 
tween Generals Paget and Clements ; how and why 
will come out in due course. It is true that General 
Hunter, hampered as he was by the difficulty of get- 
ting supplies into Bethlehem, had not time to draw 
his cordon about De Wet quite so tightly as he 
wished. But his forces and his resources were suffi- 
cient, if all his subordinates had jDroperly co-operated 
with him, to maim De Wet seriously before he could 
break free. Had Clements and Paget been worthy 
of the reliance which General Hunter had to ]3lace 
upon them, De Wet would have had but a ragged 
remnant with which to re-inforce his Transvaal allies. 

Once through the cordon, with all of South Africa 



THE LESSONS OF THE CHASE. 179 

before liim, De AYet found ample means to keep ahead 
of his pursuers. One of the most important factors 
that have contributed to the successes of the Boers 
has been their superior mobility. Subsisting as they 
do on the scantiest fare, able to live for days together 
on a j)iece of biltong which adds practically no weight 
at all to their equipment, the necessity for transport 
is materially lessened to little more than what is suffi- 
cient for the ammunition needed in the field. Again, 
they have the best horses and the best trek-oxen, which 
they can pick out at a glance from among the herds on 
the farms through Avhich they pass, and which the 
white inhabitants are only too glad to give up, to re- 
place such other animals as have broken down. The 
native horses and oxen have learned to live on the 
veldt grass and such simple forage as the country 
provides, so that the problem of obtaining food for 
both man and beast is a much simpler one than that 
which has confronted the British, forced to rely prin- 
cipally on imported and unacclimated animals, which 
do not thrive on the food-stuffs of the country, and 
which in addition are required to carry much more 
weight than the lightly-equipped Boer horseman 
straps to his saddle. Finally, the Boers never failed 
to take advantage of the fact that bullocks trek best 
at night, and will not feed between sunset and sun- 
rise. Knowing the roads and the country as perfectly 
as they did, they consequently did their marching at 



180 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

night, and tliiis were enabled to turn their animals out 
to graze during the heat of the day. Naturally, there- 
fore, their animals were under normal conditions 
much more fit for the work they had to do ; whereas 
the British, often ignorant of the country through 
which they were moving, did most of their marching 
by daylight, seldom halting before dark, and thus 
often denied their draught animals the opportunity 
to obtain their sorely -needed nourishment. 

Under these circumstances, and wdth the added ad- 
vantage that almost every one of his burghers had an 
extra horse with the convoy, De Wet seldom failed to 
cover twenty-five miles a day to his pursuers' twenty. 
This rendered pursuit futile unless his progress could 
be impeded from in front ; and it was the difficulty of 
throwing troops across his ever-changing course 
that gave the authorities at headquarters their chief 
trouble in seeking to hem in the agile Boer. The 
British would learn his direction and station a col- 
umn across his path, only to find out later that De 
Wet's watchful and extraordinarily efficient scouts 
had given ample warning to enable their commander 
so to change his direction as to make necessary a 
new disposition of the forces seeking to check him. 
And it generally happened that before precise infor- 
mation of the Boer change of front had been ob- 
tained, DeWet had slipped by, and left in his rear 
the British force that a few days or a few hours be- 



THE LESSONS OF THE CHASE. 181 

fore had been in front. Everyone who has attended 
a football g-ame in America has seen similar tactics 
employed by a swift sprinter running with the ball 
behind good interference, and threading his way 
through the opposing eleven towards the latter's goal. 
Thus it was that De Wet, after getting across the 
Yaal on August 7 and successfully slipping past Lord 
Methuen, was never again in danger of being stopped 
before he made his conjunction with Delarey. The 
time he had spent in resting and replacing his ani- 
mals and securing fresh supplies from friendly farms 
and towns in his neighborhood had repaired his 
forces ; whereas Broadwood's and Ridley's transport 
had suffered seriously, owing to the unhealthfulness 
of the camp where we had spent those two profitless 
weeks and to the necessity of sending constant con- 
voys back to the railway. Lord Methuen hung on to 
De Wet's rear guard with a persistency which if 
earlier displayed might have borne fruit ; and Lord 
Kitchener, relentlessly forcing on his mules and bul- 
locks at a killing iDace, followed hot and fast on De 
Wet's trail and tried by every means to overcome his 
latest lead. But it was a hopeless task, and the 
result was inevitable. De Wet joined Delarey not 
far from Johannesburg, and went on roaming over 
his hapi3y hunting grounds at his own sweet will. 



CHAPTEK XXI. 

The Home Trail. 

It was evident by the time we reached Welverdiend, 
on the railway between Potchefstroom and Johannes- 
burg, that De Wet could not be caug-ht by Lord 
Kitchener's force. The war had now lost the dra- 
matic interest which it formerly possessed; I was 
satisfied that it was over from the standpoint of a 
special war correspondent ; and so I decided to take 
the chance which the railway offered me to proceed 
to Johannesburg and thence to Cape Town and home. 
General Ridley approved my decision ; and on Sun- 
day morning, the twelfth of August, I took my fare- 
well of that gallant and tireless brigadier — as fine a 
type of the officer and the gentleman as you will find 
in any army — and started back from the front. 

I was back in Johannesburg again on Monday 
morning, having made the journey in an open truck 
with a dozen officers of the C. I. Y's. for companions, 
with my Cape cart in another truck behind, and Wolf 
and his comrades in a box-car ahead. Next day I 
sold my outfit for a fair price, keeping only Wolf, 
which faithful beast I presented to Lewis; and at 
two o'clock that afternoon he and I proceeded to the 
Park Station to await the train for Elandsfontein, the 



THE HOME TRAIL. 183 

junction of tlie main line with tlie Johannesburg" 
branch, where we were to connect with the train for 
the Gape. 

There was little bustle at the station on that day, 
and not many waiting passengers on the platform : 
one or two officers, half a dozen Tommies, a group 
of "undesirable" Hollanders, evidently under sen- 
tence of banishment, and a dozen or so negroes, com- 
prised the g-athering. The officers wore the bored 
look that I had become familiar with in that country ; 
Tommy was careless and happy-go-lucky as usual; 
the Hollanders and the neg-roes looked anxious. 

A hospital train drew in just before ours was due. 
One or two invalids were carried out, and during their 
removal we heard another from within cry out wildly, 
in the voice of delirium, "Another man gone!" He 
was hushed by a comrade, and a moment later the 
train pulled out. Soon afterwards a shrill whistle 
warned us of the approach of our own train. Quickly 
it appeared, rounding the curve from the main station; 
and glided swiftly up to the platform with that ease 
and smoothness characteristic of the light English 
rolling-stock. There were only open coal-trucks be- 
hind the diminutive and gentle -looking engine. Into 
these we all clambered, hauling our belongings in 
after us, officers and Tommies in khaki, Hollanders in 
sombre black, negroes in anything that would serve 
to cover them ; and ^\g minutes later, with a shrill 



184 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

shriek from the engine, we were off for Elandsfon- 
tein. 

Elandsfontein is but a short distance from Johan- 
nesburg; we were there in thirty minutes. At this 
important junction, where the railway lines from Jo- 
hannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Natal all con- 
verge, the scene was one of indescribable crowding 
and bustle, and vastly more impressive than that at 
the railway station in Cape Town when I had left 
there fifteen weeks before. Since then the front had 
been pushed up to beyond Pretoria, and the tracks, 
clustering like the filaments of a mighty web around 
the little station platform, were closely packed wath 
supply-trains, troop-trains, and trucks jammed with 
every imaginable collection of things, from a brigade 
of infantry to a train-load of Army Service Corps 
boxes. The platform in its turn was a seething mass 
of humanity, mostly composed, of course, of troops 
in khaki, but containing also a sprinkling of civilians. 
Among them the railway staff officer threaded his way 
on his ceaseless round of petty duties, answering ques- 
tions when they were not too foolish or when he was 
caught for a moment in the press, but generally 
waving people off and pushing on in search of car- 
riages and trucks which it was a constant marvel that 
he ever found. Every few moments he would raise 
his hand, and a train would glide swiftly out .of the 
station, generally carrying a regiment of soldiers to 



THE HOME TRAIL. 185 

the front, who from where they sat on boxes of sup- 
plies or lay stretched out on tarpaulins covering the 
truck-loads of other boxes, harness, or g-reat guns 
with grim, khaki-i^ainted muzzles protruding over 
the next truck, called out a cheery farewell as they 
were whirled by. One train once out, another came 
in instantly to occupy the empty track, and discharge 
more soldiers or supplies. 

I was watching all this turmoil, engrossed in the 
busy scene, when suddenly the sound of cheering in 
a high treble key caught my ears. I turned to see a 
train of gaily decorated and crowded trucks come 
sweeping in from Johannesburg. Two huge vier- 
Meurs, the proscribed Transvaal flag, formed the main 
decorations, draped over the sides of the two centre 
trucks. Standing and sitting in these was a crowd of 
Boer women and children, gaily decked out in such 
striking combinations of their national colors as might 
be expected to prove annoying to their foes and cap- 
tors. One woman held over her head a monstrous 
umbrella covered with strips of the red, white, green, 
and yellow; and everywhere in endless repetition were 
flaunted the same colors. We quickly learned that 
these were women being taken to the Boer laagers 
outside Pretoria, to be turned over to their husbands 
and fathers, whom they, while in Johannesburg and 
other towns held by the British, had been furnishing 
with valuable information. As their train drew in. 



186 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

they flung at the trooi^s around them all the taunts 
they could lay tongue to ; but five minutes later each 
truck was surrounded by cheerful Tommies ; and Boer 
and Briton, in accordance with the immutable laws of 
sex, were gaily chatting and jesting, and generally 
making merry, only a few surly ones refusing to suc- 
cumb to Tommy's blandishments. 

But there was little time left us to enjoy such an 
entertaining sight. Without an}- warning the train 
from Pretoria for which we had been waiting sud- 
denly drew in, and at once there began a mad rush 
for places. There were only a couple of carriages 
among the trucks, and seats in the former were prec- 
ious. A few officers, two or three women, and myself, 
were fortunate enough to secure these : the rest of the 
human tide surged into the trucks. There was little 
delay. At four o'clock the train pulled out again, and 
the journey to the Cape was safely begun. 

The activity of the enemy was such that it was un- 
safe for trains to proceed after dark north of Bloem- 
fontein. The first night we spent at Yiljoen's Drift, 
on the other side of the Yaal. Our progress was 
slow all the way down, as we had to wait at nearly 
everj^ siding to allow trains carrying troojDS, guns, 
horses, and su^Dplies to go by. We reached Kroon- 
stad at two o'clock on the following afternoon, but 
there learned that our train would not be allowed to 
go on until next morning. This promised a weary 



THE HOME TRAIL. 187 

period of waiting ; but there were several officers on 
board who proved congenial comi^anions, and the 
time passed pleasantly enough. A few of the officers 
on the train, invalided from the front, looked broken - 
down and dejected ; but the others had known the 
joy and profit that comes from the crowded hour of 
glorious life, as one read in one clear glance of eyes 
that had grown alert and watchful during weeks of 
looking over the veldt, searching the distant horizon 
for some trace of the foe, and in the elastic tread of 
men who for months had been close to earth and na- 
ture, and were hardened into the very perfection of 
physical health and strength. 

The next evening, the third since we left Johannes- 
burg, we reached peaceful Bloemfontein. We rested 
there but a few hours, and thence continued our 
journey unbroken to Cape Town, where we duly ar- 
rived early on Sunday morning, I having put Lewis 
on the train for Kimberley at De Aar. At the Mount 
Nelson hotel in Cape Town I doffed my travel-stained 
khaki and transformed myself into a civilian again ; 
and on the following Wednesday boarded the " Scot," 
then homeward bound on her next vovao-e, and set 
sail for home. 



CHAPTEK XXII. 

The Mex Who Fight England's Battles. 

Before closing- tliis record of some personal experi- 
ences of /'the strenuous life," I should like to say a 
final word about the British officer, whom it was my 
privileg-e to watch at close range doing the work that 
only men can do and undergoing those great tests 
that prove the mettle and the measure of a man. 
Let me say at the outset that of the officers of all 
ranks whom I met, on terms of greater or less inti- 
macy, every one, with but few excejjtions, extended 
to me every courtesy, and gave me constant i3roofs of 
their wish that only the best of good feeling might 
ptevail between the two great branches of the Eng- 
lish-speaking race. "Duke's son, cook's son, son of 
a belted Earl," all, I found, shared that wish, and 
looked forward to the time when there woidd be no 
possibility of a misunderstanding between the two 
nations. But I should not be doing justice to the 
majority of the brave men with whom I was thrown 
in such close contact, if I did not differentiate be- 
tween the best type of those I met and the others of 
Great Britain's army who proved unequal to the trust 
of upholding her prestige as it would have been up- 
held throuo-hout South Africa if the inefficient officer 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 189 

had had fewer opportunities to mar the work of his 
comrades. 

Bismarck is credited with having said once that 
the British army was a lot of lions led by jackasses. 
Like most generalizations, this definition was too 
broad to be strictly true ; but it suggests the true 
explanation of the startling successes gained by the 
Boers early in the present war, and of the humiliating 
repulses that have come now and again to interrupt 
the victorious progress of the British arms. 

It has been pointed out in preceding cha^^ters that 
the Boers are lacking in many of the soldierly quali- 
ties necessary to enable them to accomiDlish what 
they have accomplished if their enemy had made the . 
most of his opportunities on the battlefields of Natal 
and elsewhere. If the Boer had been brave in the 
true sense of the word, Ladysmith, Kimberley, and 
not impossibly even splendidly-defended Mafeking, 
would have fallen before the greatly superior forces 
which in each case were the besiegers ; and Cape 
Colony would have been harried much further south 
than it has been. And had the Boers been disciplined 
troops, there would have been something worthy of 
the name of resistance offered to Lord Roberts be- 
tAveen Paardeburg and Pretoria. 

But there is no such thing as discipline among the 
Boers. They elect their own commanders, and obey 
them until they change their minds, when they at 



190 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

ouce reduce tliein to the ranks again, or expel them 
from the commando, as they did Piet De Wet, when, 
in response to the light that was in him, he told them 
that further resistance was useless and advised them 
to surrender. And they fight only if and when the 
mood is on them ; never in recognition of such simple 
duty as obedience to one's commanding officer. Such 
troops could hardly be expected to put up much of a 
fight when the odds were not in their favor; and 
events have plainly shown that they do not do so. 

The British private soldier, on the other hand, is 
disciplined even to a fault. He learned in a few 
months' practice to shoot better than his foe ; and he 
proved himself brave with the courage of his race. 
It is not the courage of a bull-dog, to whom resist- 
ance and pain act as a tonic ; nor that of the Moham- 
medan fanatic, to whom death in battle is the door 
to highest happiness. It is the valor of a man who 
knows just what risks he is facing, not only of death 
but of disease ; who has seen half a dozen of his clos- 
est comrades die in agony of unmentionable wounds ; 
and yet who goes up against the hissing rain of bul- 
lets with his fellows falling all around him, with a 
lump in his throat and a clutch at his heart, but 
yearning only to " get into them with the bayonet ; " 
or stands behind a wall and keeps a host at bay, as 
seven men at Lindley held back a hundred Boers. 
And, as if unable to conceal that such courage is a 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 191 

part of himself, there o-oes with it a cheerfulness that 
nothing can daunt. Tommy Atkins does not go into 
action with a face drawn down with the conscious- 
ness of the sacrifice that he is making for his Queen 
and country, or with any egotistical i^rayer that his 
friends at home may realize what a brave fellow he 
is. He went marching on over parched veldt and 
past death-lined kopje with a never-faltering cheer- 
fulness. If it was cold, he built himself a bigger fixe, 
and, huddling around it, told horrid tales in a merry 
voice, and pretended to be warm when he wasn't. If 
it was wet, with the water ankle-deep around him, 
and fires were impossible, and only cold rations or 
none at all were procurable, he sat him down on an 
ant-hill, gathered his legs ujd under him, and lustily 
sang his part in the chorus to " A Life on the Ocean 
Wave." And on the eve of battle he i3assed jests 
with his comrades about " bloody business " and " a 
bullet in the belly " on the morrow. In brief, Tommy 
Atkins and his officers in this Boer war have faced 
death not with the jests of those who never felt a 
wound, but as men who know both pain and fear and 
scorn to yield to either. And Europe, crouching for 
a spring, after watching him for a while thought bet- 
ter of earlier purposes, and Czar and Kaiser prudently 
closed their doors in the faces of the Boer envoys, im- 
pressed as was one of the Russian military attaches, 
who frankly said that neither his country nor any 



192 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

other in Europe had any troops to match the British 
soldier. 

Such testimony, and the facts brought out by the 
war, force one to seek in the character of some of 
the British officers for the explanation of England's 
earlier reverses at the hands of such a contemptible 
foe as the Boer. And there the explanation is not 
hard to find. The faults of the British military sys- 
tem iDroperly wall be, and are being, discussed by 
military experts ; and their correction is well com- 
mitted to such men as Lord Roberts and Lord Kitch- 
ener. By them it will be duly made plain by whose 
fault preference was given to infantry over cavalry in 
an o^Den country like the South i^frican veldt, and 
what teaching it was that led General after General 
to hurl his forces in a frontal attack against an en- 
emy that never would stand when his flanks were 
threatened. It is sufficient to say here that the sys- 
tem has been such as to enable officers utterly un- 
worthy to rise to positions that they were unfitted to 
hold. It is undoubtedly true of the British army, as 
it w^as of that of the United States at the beofinning- 

c^ cry 

of the Spanish war, and would be of any other, that 
years of peace had enabled many officers to attain in 
the natural course of promotion to high commands 
who could never have stood the test of war. They 
remained in the army simply for lack of opportunity 
to have it proved that they had not retained or never 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 193 

possessed the necessary military qualifications. But 
a more serious fact is that the method of obtaining 
officers and the system of training them are such 
that only those who originally possess military tal- 
ents — those who, in other words, are born soldiers — 
seem enabled to develop into the highest type of 
commander. The others not only fail to progress ; 
they become more and more hampered by routine 
and red tape, and finally grow to be nothing but a 
dead weight in the service. 

The regular army, as has often been pointed out, 
recruits many of its private soldiers from some of 
the worst classes in the towns and cities : it is often 
the ne'er-do-well, who has failed to make his way in 
any other calling, who takes the Queen's shilling, im- 
pelled thereto by the martial strains of a recruiting 
sergeant's band, or by the sight of gay uniforms. 
But it has proved iDossible to lick him into sha^^e — to 
fashion him after a few years of training into as fine' 
a soldier as the Old World can show. The young offi- 
cer gets no such training. Too often he obtains his 
commission solely through social influence. Scions 
of noble houses and sprigs of the aristocracy are bred 
to look upon the army as the special field in which 
they may exi3loit themselves ; and young sapheads 
who would speedily be crowded out of any other field 
of usefulness find in some crack reofiment of g-uards 
a congenial stamping ground. Esprit de corj)s, which 

13 



194 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

is one of tlie best things about the British armj', gen- 
erally prevents their falling below a certain not too 
high standard of behavior ; they mean to demean 
themselves as officers and gentlemen should ; and 
they seldom fail to master the not over-abstrnse 
details of barrack diill and garrison routine. But 
where military ability is not sought for it is not al- 
ways f onnd ; and it is often only when the test of 
actnal war comes that the proofs which justify dis- 
missal or retirement are forthcoming. Some shrewd 
old officer will have early foreseen that Major Lord 
This, or Captain the Honorable Mayfair That cannot 
be got rid of too soon for the good of the service ; 
but the social influence that hedges him in proves a 
banier too strong to be surmounted, and he holds 
his place until some stupid blunder in the field re- 
sults in the loss of half his men, and justifies his col- 
onel or his brigadier in sending him to the rear or 
somewhere else out of hann's way. He has not failed 
in courage ; you seldom meet a coward in any army. 
He has sim^Dly proved himself the densest kind of 
fool, capable as only such an order of blockhead is 
capable of invariably doing the wi'ong thing at the 
critical moment. 

They are by no means all that way. The average 
British officer, if sometimes less quick to adapt him- 
self to his surroundings, and to adopt instinctively 
the course of action which will prove most efficacious 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 195 

against tlie j)articnlar foe with wliicli lie is dealing, 
than the quick-witted, resourceful type found in the 
American army, who at his best is without a peer the 
w^orld over, is nevertheless a man possessed of the 
best fighting qualities, and possessed, above all, of 
that fibre which forces him to take the very last 
chance to prove that he is not yet beaten — to display 
that never-say-die spirit which those who are to 
conquer must never lose. And even when he is slow 
to see, he is also slow to give in. 

But scattered among them all, and holding every 
rank, you will find the inefficient officer. Neither all, 
as Bismarck put it, nor most of them are jackasses ; 
but in South Africa you would meet at least one in 
almost every mess. The general title by which they 
were known in Tommy's picturesque if inelegant par- 
lance was " bloody fool." Heroic efforts had been 
made by Lord Kitchener and others who had no 
patience with inefficiency to post them where they 
could do the least harm ; and towards the end of the 
war you would meet them in any numbers only in 
unimportant or comparatively safe depots along the 
lines of communications, or at Ca^De Town or else- 
where far from the front ; but almost everywhere 
there were some of them lying about, and the records 
of the various operations in South Africa are teem- 
ing with illustrations of their capacity for getting 
themselves and their men into trouble. The worst 



196 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

of it was that wliere tlie theatre of war was so ex- 
tensive, and so many troops were needed, it was im- 
possible for the able generals to dispense with all 
their incapable subordinates. 

That corps of Imperial Yeomanry known as the 
Dnke of Cambridge's Own, and, unofficially, as "The 
Millionaires," w^ere gathered in by De AVet oiitside of 
Lindley because their Colonel didn't know how to 
select a tenable position nor how to make it more 
secure, and because, lacking good military judgment, 
he sent word to Lord Methuen, advancing to his re- 
lief after General Colville had declined to turn back, 
that he could easily hold out for three days longer. 
Lord Methuen timed his arrival accordingly ; but De 
Wet brought wp a couple of guns two days earlier, 
and the Colonel surrendered just that much ahead of 
time. Lord Methuen arrived to find nobody to re- 
lieve and no captors to attack. 

It was the knowledge that the General under whom 
he was serving had not the qualities to win victories 
that dashed the hopes of further distinction of many 
an officer who had proved his worth, in earlier opera- 
tions, only to be assigned after the crisis was over to 
the command of some inefficient General whose inevi- 
table failures were certain to rob his subordinates of 
any further opportunities for distinction. Such a 
case was that of Colonel Kekewitch, who so ably 
conducted the defence of Kimberlej^ His task was 



THE 3IEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 197 

not simply military. Besides overseeing the defences 
of the town and keeping the Boers at bay, he had to 
keep in order by the display of infinite tact and cheer- 
fulness a heterogeneous population of which portions 
were only too willing to find fault and to make harder 
still the task of the defenders. But after that town 
was relieved, and his efforts were crowned with the 
success they deserved, he and his regiment, the Loyal 
North Lancashires, were assigned to Lord Methuen's 
division, and one subsequent chance after another of 
further distinguishing themselves was denied them. 
Personallj^, Lord Methuen is one of the most charm- 
ing of courteous gentlemen : one's ideal of what a man 
of blood and breeding ought to be. But he is the 
victim of a lately-developed constitutional weakness 
which in the excitement of battle clouds clear fore- 
sight and judgment and weakens that grasp of the 
situation which a commander, to be successful, ought 
always to have. He is as careful and methodical a 
transport officer as there is in the British army. He 
lost fewer animals, and, while keeping his force at 
the top notch of efficiency, got more out of them 
than any other commander of his rank. But the 
successful conduct of serious o^oerations in the face 
of the enemy was beyond him, as Magersfontein, 
Modder River, and, later, the operations against De 
Wet, to mention no others, proved. 

I have been told, on what is undoubtedly the best 



198 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

of authority, that Lord Methuen personally was not 
to blame for the disaster at Magersfontein, which re- 
sulted from the failure of one of his subordinates to 
carry out his orders. But many of his officers told 
me enough to make it plain that the battle of the 
Modder should not have been the disaster that it 
was ; and it yet remains to be explained how it was 
that Lord Methuen failed to prevent De Wet from 
successfully breaking across the Yaal on the 7th of 
August, when he had a whole division to head off 
the Boer force of 3,000. The story is told that De 
Wet accomplished this by sending six empty wagons 
with a corps of riflemen to one drift, upon which 
Lord Methuen, taking the bait, hurled nearly his 
whole force, thus leaving the way clear for the main 
body of Boers to cross by another drift a few miles 
to the east. The truth of this explanation remains 
to be proved ; but De Wet's success must have been 
due to some such ruse which it ought to have been 
possible to circumvent. But Lord Methuen was not 
recalled nor relieved of his command, apparently be- 
cause the Queen, Lord AYolseley, and his other influ- 
ential friends at home knew him only for the knightly 
soldier that he is, sans peur et sans rejproclie, and were 
unaware of the existence of the infirmity that has 
clouded his earlier-displayed talents. Lord Roberts 
noted his failures in the field, but went no further 
than to isolate him in a section of the country where 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 199 

the cliance of doino- brilliant work was almost less 
than that of making new blunders — a course of action 
wdiich was so kind as to be cruel to the other officers 
of Lord Methuen's force. Among other consequences 
it gave De Wet the chance to say that while Baden- 
Powell might catch him in one month and French in 
two, Methuen never could, and to make good his 
words by marching all his guns and convoy around 
Lord Methuen's front that night he broke away from 
Kitchener and Broadwood and Bidley on the Vaal, 
displaying that same knowledge of the weakness in 
his enemy's armor which had enabled him to elude 
Paget and Clements south of Bethlehem three weeks 
before. 

Another General, lower in rank than Lord Methuen 
but with opportunities for endless mischief which he 
was never slow to improve, was Hart, who began 
service under BuUer in Natal, where he gained the 
name of being one of the most conspicuous failures 
of that campaign. Of Hart it is related that after 
one particularly disastrous day, in which his forces 
had suffered heavily, a private whom the General 
passed after the action was over, called out to him in 
the bitterness of his heart that he had murdered his 
regiment. The court-martial that tried the man sen- 
tenced him to one day's confinement in the sfuard- 
tent, a sufficiently clear reflection of the general 
opinion as to what that particular brigadier's capaci- 



200 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

ties were. It was sucli qualities wliicli brought about 
the abandonment of Spion Kop after the Boers 
themselves had deserted the field, and which resulted 
in the failure to make that one more attack at Storm- 
berg- which the Boers were expecting, which, as thej^ 
themselves subsequently acknowledged, they had de- 
cided not to withstand, and which would have changed 
the rout into a victory. 

Another " regrettable incident " which ought not 
to have occurred was the capture of 500 officers and 
men of the Derbyshire Militia on the railway near 
Kopjes Station, in the Orange River Colony. This 
disaster was due entirely to ignorance and inefficiency 
on the part of the officers responsible. They selected 
for their camp a spot in an open, leA^el plain, at the 
foot of a high kopje, on which thej^ posted a single 
picket, leaving other kopjes within range unwatched ; 
and, without entrenching or taking any other pre- 
cautions, the command, which was just out from 
home, lay down to sleep. With daylight next morn- 
ing they were fired on. There is a tale to the effect 
that the Sergeant of the picket came twice early that 
morning to his commanding officer to report suspi- 
cious signs in the neighborhood of the camp, only to 
be told on the first occasion that he Avas dreaming 
and on the second that if he made any more such 
fool reports he w^ould be disciplined. However that 
may be, the picket was shorth^ afterwards driven in ; 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 201 

and although the militiamen, called to arms from 
their couches, made a splendid stand against three 
thousand Boers and three guns, losing 35 killed and 
102 wounded, they were hopelessly penned in and in 
the end had no recourse but to yield. 

Similarly regrettable was the cutting up outside of 
Lindley of a four-gun section of the 38th Field Bat- 
tery, which lost all its officers and seventeen out of 
fifty men killed or wounded. It is an axiom in battle 
that guns shall not go into action without an escort. 
In this case the escort was furnished by 150 men of 
the Imperial Yeomanry. Yet so carelessly did the 
officer commanding this escort discharge his duty 
that a large force of Boers was permitted to creep 
unseen through a mealie field to within fifteen yards 
of the guns. Two of the three officers of the battery 
were killed, the other being twice severely wounded, 
and one of the guns was captured, to be recovered 
only by brilliant work by a force of Australian bush- 
men, who charged down from the rear and drove off 
the Boers with severe loss. 

In the same neighborhood a few days before oc- 
curred an incident which shows how Tommy, given 
the chance, can redeem almost any folly of his officers. 
A picket of twenty -fii^e men of the Yorkshire Light 
Infantry outside of Lindley was surprised by one 
hundred Boers who, dressed in British uniform, had 
thus found the chance to get within a few hundred 



202 THE CHASE OF DE WET. 

yards. When they opened fire at that deadly dis- 
tance, the men of the picket saw they were lost unless 
reinforcements were at once obtained. The only way 
of communicating- with the town was by means of a 
heliograph, which stood in the open, fully exposed 
to the Boer fire, and twenty yards away from the wall 
behind which the picket had taken cover. Private 
Ward volunteered to go out and signal for aid, and 
obtained the necessary permission. Dashing out into 
the zone of fire, he reached the instrument, stood by 
it long enough to flash the signal, " If help is not 
sent at once we shall have to surrender," and then 
ran back for cover. He was hit by a Boer bullet just 
before he reached the wall: it would have been a 
miracle if he hadn't been. But he had accomplished 
his purpose and won the Victoria Cross. The 38th 
Battery galloped the two miles out from town to find 
seven survivors of the twenty-five still holding the 
Boers at bay. 

It is indomitable spirit such as this which makes 
the rank and file of the British army what it is, and 
which has saved many a situation that by all the laws 
of war was lost. It is a spirit which Tommy Atkins 
learns from most of his ofiicers, and which very few 
even of the " bloody fools" do not possess. And it 
is the spirit that Americans should glory in as much 
as Englishmen, for it is born in the blood and bred 



THE MEN WHO FIGHT ENGLAND'S BATTLES. 203 

in the bone of the race to which we both belong. It 
is the spirit of men 

"All bound to sing o' the little things we care about, 
All bound to fight for the little things we care about 
With the weight of a six-fold blow 1" 



The End. 



jQAt-B. 1801 



MAY 31 1901 



